Blade of Tyshalle

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  Before they were married.

  Be careful, he'd told her, trying—really trying to keep it light. You get in trouble over there this time, l can't come and bail you out.

  It hadn't raised even the faintest of smiles. Keep your eye on Tan'elKoth, she'd said. Don't ever let yourself forget who he is.

  He'd answered, He better not forget who I am.

  It had been a pretty good line, but it was only a line.

  Her coffin began to shimmer around the edges as it interposed with the nearly identical one coming through from Overworld. It took on a faint translucency; the other resolved into a more solid existence; within a second or so, Shanna's coffin was only a ghost shape, and the new one—roughly half-full of water—became solid, fully here. Shanna was gone.

  Now, somewhere in another universe, there appeared a goddess named Pallas Ril.

  Hari thanked the technician and walked out of the techdeck. Outside, near the elevator that would return him to the public areas of the Studio, Rover waited with electronic patience. Hari scowled at it—but after a moment he sighed, shrugged, and sat down. As he rolled into the elevator, he dug out his palmpad and keyed the code for the Abbey. When Bradlee answered, Hari asked him to put Faith on.

  Her smile nearly filled the tiny screen. "Hi, Daddy. Mommy's with the river now," she reported.

  "Yeah, I know, honey, " Hari told her. "I was just with her. Listen—"

  "She's pretty worried," she said, her smile fading and her golden brows wrinkling. The familiar glazed, eldritch dissociation gathered in her eyes. When Pallas Ril walked the lands of Overworld, half of Faith walked with her.

  Hari nodded. "It's a pretty serious thing she's doing over there." Faith said solemnly, "She's worried about you."

  "Listen," he said, "since you're off school today anyway, I was thinking I might take the rest of the day off and go down to Fancon. Maybe even a couple of days off. You want to come along?"

  "Really? Really for real?"

  "Sure, really for real. How about it? Still in your con clothes?" "Sure. Uh, Mommy's happy I get to go to the con."

  "Yeah, I'll bet. Me, too. One other thing, honey: before Mommy left, we were real busy and in a big hurry, and I forgot something I need to tell her, okay?"

  "Okay"

  "Just tell her I said I love her."

  "Uh-huh. She loves you, too," Faith said with simple, serene matter-of-factness. "But I don't really tell her things. It's not like that. She just knows."

  "I just wanted to make sure," Hari said. "I just wanted to make sure she knows."

  The crooked knight laid himself down to rest. There was no battle left for him to fight. He had fulfilled his mission, succeeded in his quest. His war was won.

  But he remained, nonetheless, the crooked knight.

  In winning, he had lost.

  SIX

  "Changeling?" The high, thin voice sounded like a breathy piccolo, and a hand like a coin-sized grapnel tugged at his ear. "Changeling, wake up!"

  Deliann rolled over. He didn't want to open his eyes; he couldn't remember exactly, but he was moderately sure that waking up would hurt, somehow—and he was so warm, so comfortable, and the bed was so soft...

  "Changeling!" Something poked him hard in the neck; he couldn't be sure, but it might have been a kick from a very small bare foot. "Kier says she needs you."

  Just as well, he thought, rubbing at his gummy eyelids until he could part them. If I sleep any longer, I'll probably start to dream.

  The heavy brocade curtains drawn across the windows in Kierendal's bedchamber were outlined by the yellow glare of the afternoon outside. Standing on the mattress next to his shoulder was an extraordinarily beautiful treetopper, her diaphanous wings a transparent shimmer in the gloom. She looked like a twenty-inch human female of extravagantly sensual proportion: long elegant legs, a tiny wasp waist, outrageously high firm breasts. She wore a minuscule shift, belted at the waist, barely long enough to cover the swell of her ass and revealing a dangerous amount of cleavage.

  "Tup ..." he said thickly. "H'long . . . Timezit?"

  "It's about four," Tup said. "You've been asleep for five hours or so. You have to get up, now—Kier sent me to get you."

  "Yes, all right," he made himself say, and sat up.

  He had only a fuzzy recollection of coming into this room; Kierendal had led him here after they'd let the Aktir go; at the end of his performance for the people who were watching through that man's eyes, Deliann had nearly collapsed. He had barely kept his head up long enough to eat some of the soup that Kierendal fed him. He remembered being led in here ... he remembered Kierendal's lips, soft against his ear: "Do you know, you are the only human who's ever had me for free?"

  He remembered her mouth against his, and that's when he realized he was naked.

  He pulled the sheet around his hips. "Urh, Tup? You wouldn't happen to know where my pants are?"

  "On the chair. Come on, hurry up."

  He felt as if his whole body were turning red. He had some hazy impression that Tup was—or used to be—Kierendal's lover. Had he done something with Kierendal? What had happened between them? He would remember if he'd had sex

  Wouldn't he?

  He gathered the sheet higher around his waist. "Tup, please. If you wouldn't mind—?"

  Tup put her hands on her hips. "Changeling, I live in a whorehouse. You think I've never seen a dick before? Please. I've seen yours; I was here when Kier undressed you."

  He closed his eyes, sighed, and opened them again. Well, at least that means I didn't have sex. He glanced at Tup, who glared at him impatiently. Probably.

  "All right," he said. "All right, I'm coming--I mean, I'm getting ready." He climbed out of bed and into the pants Kierendal had given him. "Better hurry," Tup said. "She's pretty upset."

  "About what?" Deliann asked dully, pulling the shirt on over his head. "And what does she need me for? She has plenty of security."

  "She didn't say, exactly. Some snarl with a roger, up in the suites. He's got a hostage. She said to tell you this roger's sweaty and feverish—he's claiming his dolly was trying to poison him."

  Deliann went still, half into the shirt, while a jagged ball of ice congealed in his stomach. That's it, he thought. That's why I didn't want to wake up. That's exactly it.

  A slow weight gathered on his shoulders, crushing him toward the floor, but he just shook his head and slipped on the pair of sandals beside the chair.

  "Show me the way," he said.

  2

  Tup looped through the stairwell above him, circling and doubling back to maintain airspeed while she led him up toward the Yellow Suites, in the east wing of the fifth floor. Deliann struggled to keep pace, gasping with the pain each step brought his maimed legs.

  Kierendal paced back and forth in the corridor, waiting for them. She wore her afternoon business attire—loose pants and shirt of shimmering black silk set off with a single string of gleaming pearls—and her silver hair was drawn back in a bun so tight it brought an extra slant to her eyes. A spot of blood showed at the corner of her mouth, where she'd been chewing her lower lip with her needle-sharp canines. She had a pair of her overt guards with her, ogres each nearly nine feet tall and five feet wide, dressed in heavy calf-length hauberks and carrying morningstars the size of Deliann's head. "Deliann," she said shortly, nodding him toward an open door beside her. "In here."

  When Tup started to flutter in with them, Kierendal shook her head. "You stay out of here. Go back down to my chambers, wait for me there." "Aww, Kier—"

  Kierendal bared her sharp and bloody teeth. "Go. Now."

  Tup went.

  Within the room, a tearstained human girl of about twenty sat on the edge of the bed. A stonebender knelt on the bed beside her, holding a bloody towel against the girl's cheek. As Deliann entered, the stonebender drew back the towel, revealing an ugly gaping wound on the girl's face. Instead of a cheek, the side of her face was a pair of raw-meat flaps that didn't qu
ite join up; she looked like somebody had stuck a knife in her mouth and sliced through her cheek all the way back to the hinge of her jaw.

  Deliann winced; his stomach wasn't steady enough for this.

  "Bleed's almost stop," the stonebender said kindly. "Good girl, brave girl. Fix you good, no worry."

  Deliann could see that she used to be beautiful.

  Dully, through the wall, he could hear the sound of someone pacing back and forth, heavily, like he was stomping cockroaches with big boots. "Whaddaya fuckin' think?" someone was saying in the adjoining room. "Whaddaya fuckin' think? What was I s'poza do?"

  The stonebender began to stitch the girl up with his blunt, nimble fingers, using a long curved leather-working needle; the stitches would hold the skin and muscle in place while his magick accelerated the natural healing process. Probably wouldn't scar—not much, anyway—but it had to hurt. She whimpered, and tears leaked from her eyes, and Deliann had to look away.

  "Her roger's still next door," Kierendal said. "Near as I can tell, he started acting up out of nowhere, and Tessa cried the carp. He only had time to cut her once; she made the door in a scramble when the guards broke in."

  "Tup said something about a hostage?"

  She shook her head grimly and nodded at a small spy gate set into the adjoining wall. "Have a look, if you want. The bastard knifed one of my boys and coldcocked the other. I don't want to send in anyone else. It's not just that he might kill Endy; I'm a little worried about letting any more of my people get close to him."

  Deliann nodded. "Not just him—if he's sick, she has it, too. We shouldn't be in here. Let the healer stay with her."

  Might as well; if the whore was infected, the healer was already dead.

  He took Kierendal's arm and drew her back out into the corridor. He lowered his voice, leaning dose to her to keep his words private. "Did you touch the girl? Has anyone else touched her, or been close to her or the, er, the roger?"

  "I don't think so."

  "All right. Tup said something about poison?"

  "Yes. I can't be sure-you can guess that she's not talking too well," Kierendal said with a nod toward the wounded girl. "I'm only going on what I've overheard from next door. He's been saying something about poison in her mouth—crazy talking, like her kiss would kill him and he had to cut off her lips to save his life, like that. That's why I thought you should have a look at him. You ... showed me ... more than I want to know about this disease of yours, but you're the expert."

  "I'm no expert," Deliann told her gloomily.

  "You're the closest I have."

  "All right. First, it's pretty unlikely that anyone in Ankhana could be infected—this is probably some kind of drug reaction. The disease broke out all the way up beyond Khryl's Saddle—"

  "It's not worth taking a chance," Kierendal said grimly. "You give me a yes, I'll burn down this whole fucking wing. You put me through that fey's death. You made me know what it feels like. I won't watch my people die like that. I'll kill her myself."

  Deliann's golden gaze met Kierendal's silver for a long moment; he saw how much it hurt her even to say such a thing. He also saw that she'd do it, no matter how much it hurt.

  But it's not HRVP, he told himself. It can't be. It's some kind of drug reaction, that's all. Like I said.

  The hall door also had a spy gate in it. Deliann stepped over and slid it open; he'd take a quick look, glance at the guy to set Kierendal's mind at ease, then tell her everything was all right. Simple. Easy.

  Through the gate he could see a fey on the floor in an enormous pool of blood, his head twisted awkwardly, one side of his neck slashed into a ragged mockery of lips. A fly settled onto his face and walked across his open eye.

  Scarlet bootprints stained the floor, where someone had tracked through the blood and walked off out of sight.

  On the bed was a thick-muscled stonebender, wrists and ankles tied together with a twisted bedsheet, a wadded pillowcase stuffed in his mouth. With small, slow movements, the stonebender rotated his wrists and worked his ankles against each other, surreptitiously loosening the knots that held him.

  "Whaddameye s'poza do? Huh? She'da kilt me. Whaddaya fuckin' think I'm gonna do?" The voice came more clearly through the spy gate; no longer muffled by the intervening wall, it sounded sickeningly familiar.

  Then the speaker stomped into view: a huge, broad-shouldered ogrillo, his grey-leather face dripping sweat and one eye glaring feverishly. He wore gaudy, new-looking clothes of garishly dyed linen; now drenched with blood down his right side. He carried no weapon, but the razor-sharp fighting claw on his right wrist was fully extended and bright with blood.

  One of his undershot tusks was a broken stump; the ivory of the other was blackened and scorched.

  Deliann sagged against the wall.

  Better I had died in the mountains, he thought. The pain in his chest wouldn't let him speak, wouldn't let him even breathe. Oh, Rroni, why couldn't you have been a better swordsman? Why couldn't you have opened my skull right then?

  Oh, god, god, I would give anything if only I had died .. .

  The murderous ogrillo in the suite was the foredeck second.

  "What is it?" Kierendal said. "It's bad, isn't it? I can see it on your face." "It's bad," Deliann echoed.

  Kierendal turned to her ogre guards, her face bleak with harsh necessity. "Evacuate this wing. I want everybody out of here within five minutes. Get all the available security and sweep every room. Anybody still in here, five minutes from now? They'll die in the fire."

  One of the ogres twitched his enormous morningstar at the door where Deliann stood. "Whad aboud thhem? Whad aboud Endy? How you gonna ged him oud?"

  "We're not," Kier said. "Endy, Tessa, Parkk—they're all staying." The ogres exchanged dimly dismayed glances. "Bud you said—"

  "You don't have to understand," Kierendal said. "Just do what I tell you."

  "You're the one who doesn't understand," Deliann said.

  He pushed himself away from the wall, wondering numbly that he still moved. How could he stand, under this weight? How could he speak? How could he still live, with his heart rotting inside him? "You don't understand," he repeated slowly, painfully. "I know that 'rillo.'"You do?" Kierendal blinked. "Small world. But that doesn't change anything"

  "Yes, it does. It changes everything. He's infected. There's only one way he could have been infected, to be showing symptoms right now."

  Deliann spread his hands in absolute surrender; agony like this could not be fought, and could not possibly be endured. "I'm immune. I don't get sick. But he must have somehow caught it from me."

  Kierendal's eyes went wide and blank.

  Slowly, numbly, she lifted a nerveless hand to her face, staring sightlessly past him. She pressed her lips with her fingers, as though remembering her mouth against his—as though trying to calculate the infinite cost of that one kiss.

  3

  Deliann lay in the darkness, twisted into a fetal knot of pain. Pain paralyzed him, left him helpless, shuddering on the cold, hard floor. He was only one stride from a couch, half a room away from a bed where he could lie, but the only motion his limbs would make was an intermittent nerveless twitch, a racking convulsion halfway between a lung-rotted cough and a dry sob.

  He had never imagined there was this much pain in the world.

  Lying at the bottom of the cliff in the God's Teeth with both legs broken had been nothing; it was as though his legs had some kind of a circuit breaker, a transformer that stepped down the pain. His heart, though

  Eaten by acid, it left a smoking hole in his chest, a sucking emptiness that screamed regret. This pain only grew. Long ago it had passed unendurable; he would howl, but the hole in his chest had eaten too much of his strength. He could not even whimper. He could only lie on the cold floor, and suffer.

  He had brought madness and death to this whole city.

  His stupidity—his simple thoughtless foolishness—had murdered Kierendal, a
nd Tup, and her houseboy Zakke, and the pretty human whore with the slashed face, and the stonebender healer Parkk, and the ogre guards-‑

  and—

  and

  and .. .

  Kierendal's first thought had been to seal the building—to save the city by burning down Alien Games with herself and everyone else inside it. She knew what she was in for; he'd made her feel every inch of the death of the young fey at the village outside Diamondwell. A shrieking death in fire, going down to darkness with the smell of your own roasting flesh in your nostrils, was far kinder than what that young fey had endured.

  But even that would be useless; she'd given up any hope of slowing the infection. She could save nothing.

  Alien Games was a brothel, a casino, an attraction for tourists from all corners of the Empire. The infection that he had carried here would have spread already into the city, and would be creeping outward into the Empire along the arteries of the Great Chambaygen like blood poisoning up a wounded leg.

  How could he have been so blind?

  In a minute or two, he'd get up. He'd go into the bedchamber next door, where Kierendal sat in darkness with Tup and Zakke and Pischu, her floor boss. He'd take a cup, and fill it with the wine that they were drinking even now.

  He thought of Socrates, taking the hemlock and pacing his prison, walking back and forth to bring it on the quicker; he doubted he could do that. He wasn't entirely sure he could stand at all. Kierendal, she was stronger: she had marched into the bedchamber as though she'd left doubt and fear behind on another world.

  On the other hand, only her brief future weighed down on her. Deliann had been crushed by the past.

  He hoped that all he would find, on the far side of the cup of wine that waited for him next door, was darkness and an end to pain—but if not, if he was to face some judgment for his crimes, he did not fear it. Even the most brutal hell could not hurt him worse than this.