Blade of Tyshalle

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  I guess, in a sick way, it's appropriate.

  I remember from the old movies that you're supposed to stand upright in the tumbrel; it's traditional. Just one more fucking thing that I can't get right. Tale of Two Cities . . . Scaramouche ... The Scarlet Pimpernel with Leslie Howard ... That was Shanna's favorite

  Shanna

  Oh, Christ—

  The weight of it threatens to snap what's left of my spine, and the light of day recedes from me as I spiral back down into the pit.

  The pit is a warm and friendly darkness; this is where I have lived, most days since Transdeia, whenever that suede-faced motherfucker Raithe left me alone. What I have for company in the pit are comradely fantasies of having my head blown off by one of those assault rifles that some of Raithe's friars now carry slung-beneath their robes, so they resemble mere concealed swords. I can feel it exactly as it would happen, but in two-hundred-frames-a-second slowmo: the initial entry of the slug as it parts my scalp and punches through my skull, goes tumbling and slivering through my brain, trailing a wake of oblivion before a fist-sized splintered hole erupts on the far side.

  I can dream of this, and be happy.

  The head shot is only one of several friends of mine; sometimes I can cheer myself with the slice of a short blade into my heart, and darkness scaling my carotid artery like blood billowing through seawater; sometimes the billow of blood is literal, as I watch it pulse from opened wrists. ' Wrists, hell—I've carved enough meat in my day that I could do better, if anyone gives me a chance. I'd only need about an inch of blade to open my femoral artery; that would drop me into my Edenic oblivion almost as fast as one to my heart. It'd be easy. No hesitation cuts: my legs are already dead. Wouldn't even sting.

  I don't need the pain. I'm not out to punish myself. Only the oblivion counts.

  Everything else is just foreplay.

  I'd really kind of like to rest here, drift off in some kind of half nap to close out the ugly truth of myself, but the crowd won't let me. They're chanting a name over and over in the kind of nasty, mockingly petty singsong that reminds me how much people in general are pretty shitty creatures. When I was maybe ten years old, I tried to kill a kid who was singsonging me like that—the only difference was that he knew my name.

  These idiots keep calling me Caine.

  I'd ignore them, but they insist on getting my attention with the pieces of fruit, and the eggs, with clods of horseshit and the occasional rock that hit me from time to time. Every once in a while, somebody throws a handful of gravel; some of that sticks to the mingled yolk and peach meat and drippy shit, and some of it works its way in under my collar and trickles down my chest and back and ribs and scrapes into the open sores of my burns. The parade passes a little too close to some buildings, and kids in the windows have a contest to see who can spit the biggest hawker into my hair.

  You can't rest down in the dark with crap hitting you all the time and the damn band blaring and the sunlight sparking off everybody's iridescent braid and brass horns and halberds polished into scarlet steel mirrors. And the worst thing—the really, deeply, fundamentally loathsome vileness that makes me despise myself beyond any masochistic fantasy of self-hatred—is that I can't stop Acting.

  I'm still doing it: still watching, still commenting, still describing what I feel. Even down in the pit, swimming toward the darkness that is my sole desire, I have to tell myself what I'm doing.

  I'm telling myself

  Seven years ago, when I was last here in Ankhana, as I lay dying on the damp arena sand of Victory Stadium, I thought I understood. I thought I knew who my real enemy was: my audience.

  But I'm still performing .. .

  Now my only audience is me.

  Oh, god, god, what an ugly, ugly creature I am.

  Because this is what I did it for. This, right here. What's happening right now. The parade.

  This is why Shanna is dead. This is why Faith is gone forever. This is what has killed Dad, and has stolen every joy I'd ever dreamed to have. And so: Here I am.

  The center of attention. The Main Event.

  The band plays, the sun shines, the people of Ankhana cheer, and no hell could burn like this.

  All this, so that I could be a star.

  9

  The Caineslayer pulled himself free of the Caine Mirror with a shuddering gasp, and mopped sweat from his mouth with the back of a trembling hand. I should heave this damned thing into the river, he thought. He quieted his shivering and forced his breathing into a regular pattern, but still the weakness in his limbs made him stagger as he stepped back.

  Instead of tossing the Caine Mirror into the river where it belonged, the Caineslayer found himself reluctantly offering a silver noble to an ogre who had served as a poleboy on the barge to bear it—and the trunk containing his Ambassadorial robes—to the embassy.

  The case containing Kosall he would carry with his own hand. This case was narrow and flat, half again as long as one of his arms, built of light springy slats of wood covered with leather, bound with brass nails.

  He held the case cradled like a child, frowning.

  Within this case was the most holy relic of the Imperial Church, lost for seven years; a weapon of power that Saint Berne had used not only for the blow that struck down the Prince of Chaos, but now to slay the Aktir Queen. He found it wholly curious: Though he knew full well that Caine had been only a man, that Berne had been a rapist and murderer—and lately only a corpse driven by a demon—and that Ma'elKoth himself was no more than a political prisoner in the Aktiri lands, carrying this weapon still raised a pious chill along his spine.

  Though he now knew the truth behind the faith he'd practiced these many years, the faith remained. Somehow, he was able to see Caine as both an ordinary man and as the Enemy of God at the same time, without contradiction. Within this case was a blade that was only a weapon, but also a mythic symbol of the power of a god—who was only a man, but no less a god.

  Curious, indeed.

  As a symbol, this sword was too potent for him; he had planned—he still planned—to lock it within the embassy's Secure Vault; he'd allow the Council of Brothers to decide its final disposition. But he could not simply sling it over his shoulder and walk, not now; he had borne it down this river, he had kept it safe, he had never even opened the case

  He could not bear to give it up without at least looking at it, one last time.

  He could not bring himself to open the case now, though, not here, not in this crude shelter of slats and canvas—not where at any moment he might be interrupted, be discovered, peered at by dull uncomprehending eyes. This is nothing shameful, he insisted to himself. There is nothing shameful here; but it is personal.

  He tucked the case under his arm and stepped out into the slanting sunlight on deck. Around him, the deckers and poleboys worked at their own simpleminded tasks, casting only the occasional incurious glance his way. As he stood there in the doorway, a decker shambled up to him sullenly. "Leaving? Done with shelter?"

  "With this?" the Caineslayer said distantly, moving away. "Yes. I am done with shelter."

  Yet he could not make himself carry the case off the barge. Certainly, the simplest course would have been to slip into the city, to find himself a private room in some random tavern, a room with a lock on its door—the simplest course, but not easy. Not easy at all. Somewhere deep within his bowels lurked a dread of what he was about to do, as though this sword might have a power over him not unlike that of the Caine Mirror. Here on the barge, he still had some control.

  Holding the case tight in his armpit, he folded his fingers together in a specifically complex knot, breathed deeply three times, and vanished from the consciousness of the barge crew. Any whose eye fell upon him forgot his existence an instant later; any who thought of him assumed he had left the barge with the triumphal parade. He slipped onto the afterdeck, knelt, and crawled into a narrow tunnel formed by untidily stacked cargo crates bound for the Teranese Delta, whe
re the Great Chambaygen emptied into the sea.

  He knelt, and lay the case on the deck before his knees. He shut his eyes reverently, opening the case's latches by feel, then swung back the case's lid. He covered his face with his hands, breathing into his palms until he felt himself to be calm; then slowly he opened his eyes and took his hands away and looked upon the naked blade within its bed of crushed blue velvet. The shadows of the crates that surrounded him were striped with sunlight leaking through their slats: one single shaft shone the length of Kosall, bringing it to golden life.

  Long, a handbreadth wide at the quillons, straight grey steel painted with silver runes, now dark with the brown splashes of the Aktir Queen's blood—he had not wiped the blade, for fear of disturbing the unknown magick bound into the painted runes, and for the same reason had not returned it to a scabbard.

  Kosall.

  The blade of Saint Berne.

  Its hilt was a span and a half, wrapped with sweat-stained leather, pommel a plain steel knob; his hands trembled, fluttered near and away again like anxious moths. Dare he lift it this one time?

  Could he not?

  He laid his fingers, delicate as a kiss, upon a quillon. He stroked the chill steel, then took it hard into his hand. As his hand closed around the leather-wrapped hilt, the blade came to life. Warm, humming with power, it left him weak with desire. He pulled the sword up from its bed and raised it before his eyes.

  This blade had parted the flesh of Caine.

  Holding leather stained with the sweat of Saint Berne, he could feel it: could feel the slide of buzzing steel through lips of skin into the hard muscle of Caine's abdominal wall, through the writhe of intestine into the sizzle at the base of his spine.

  Breathless, trembling, he reached forth with his mind and touched the steel, searching its energies for memories of Caine's blood and bone. With his power, he looked within the blade

  And something within the blade seized him, gripped his eyes, his heart, his limbs. From his throat came the hope of a scream, strangled to a convulsive gasp; his back arched and his irises rolled up to disappear within his skull.

  He pitched backward into darkness. When he hit the deck, he bounced like a doll carved of green wood.

  The dragoness was human, but no less a dragoness.

  Much has been written elsewhere of the nature of dragonkind. Most of it is wrong. Dragons are not, as a species, creatures of evil bent upon wanton slaughter; nor are they merely great winged lizards asleep upon mounds of treasure. They are neither elemental forces of nature nor repositories of supernatural wisdom.

  Mostly, they are individuals. The essential nature of one may vary widely from that of the next.

  There are, however, certain assertions that may truthfully be made of dragons as a species. They tend to be acquisitive, vengeful, jealous of their lands and possessions, and surpassingly fierce in their defense. Though slow to anger, they can be extremely dangerous when roused, and none more so than a dragoness defending her young. In these ways, dragonkind is very like humankind.

  This is why the dragoness could be human, but no less a dragoness.

  The dragoness had lived her life according to the custom of her kind; she patiently oversaw her possessions, slowly extending their borders by gradual effort over many years. She tended her flocks, and added to her wealth by the occasional raid upon an unwary neighbor.

  She kept almost entirely to herself she had little interest in the events of the wider world, and so would likely have never entered this story, save that on one raid—a raid of vengeance, upon her most hated enemy—she had taken the child of the river.

  The child of the river was pursued by the god of dust and ashes. And thus the dragoness became part of this story.

  THIRTEEN

  Avery Shanks dabbed blood from the cut on her lower lip, looked upon her granddaughter, and pondered the fundamental unpredictability of existence.

  This was an unaccustomed pastime for her, and she found it both difficult and uncomfortable. She thought of herself as active, rather than contemplative: a doer, a decider. An operative principle. A verb.

  Yet now, unexpectedly, reality had jumped her from behind and knocked her over; this verb had become an object, held down and pummeled by a force that was beyond her capacity to resist. This force cared nothing for her self-image of ruthless decisiveness; it permitted only an arbitrarily limited range of decision, rigidly bounded by the fortress walls of her heart. She—who had lived her life in simple declaratives—must now accept a conditional, no matter how it stung.

  She might possibly love this child.

  Few who knew Avery Shanks would ever guess that she was capable of such an emotion. If asked, she would deny it. For her, love was less an emotion than a pressure: a physical compression that seized her heart, her lungs, every part of her, and punished her mercilessly. In the wilder moments of hallucination occasionally brought on by her overindulgence in sedatives and alcohol, she saw a monster that rode behind her shoulder, its tentacles sliding into her chest through puckered mouths that had opened upon her skin; this monster used its hideous grip to drive her this way and that, to force her into unwise choices and ridiculous actions, and sometimes, simply and purely, maliciously, to inflict pain. This, to Avery Shanks, was love.

  She had loved Karl.

  Seven years of brutal self-denial had shrunk the monster that had tortured her since his death, carved away its power over her, until it could produce only the odd twinge, here and there. But now, fear pooled in Avery Shanks' belly when she looked at her granddaughter: The monster might be coming back.

  And it wore the face of a child she had never seen until just a week ago.

  "Faith," she said firmly, though her hand reached out with timid gentleness to the girl's flaxen hair—hair so much like Karl's had been, at this age. "Faith, you must lie still. Lie still for Grandmaman, mm?"

  Faith's response was a slow calming, a shuddering release of tension like a bridge cable being unwinched to slack; she had barely spoken for two days now, and her eyes remained empty as a midsummer's sky.

  The room was walled, floored, and ceilinged with soft, resilient, featureless white plastic. SynTech had the contract to produce Social Police holding cells—through Petrocal, the company SynTech had acquired through Avery's marriage to the father of her children, the late Carlton Norwood—and so retrofitting this room in Avery's Boston mansion had been swift and relatively inexpensive. A screen wider than Faith's outstretched arms dominated one wall, but it remained deliberately detuned so that it showed pulsing electronic snow; oceanic white noise hissed from its concealed speakers.

  Since Sunday morning, this room had been the only place in which Faith could open her eyes without screaming.

  The technician nodded his thanks to Avery and lifted a gunmetal tiara from which sprouted the fine, nearly invisible hairs of neural probes. "Okay, Businessman. Let's try this again, shall we?"

  Avery sighed. "Yes. But for the last time." She stroked Faith's arms and clasped her wrists firmly. "Lie still, now, Faith. This will not hurt, I promise you."

  Dozens of tests had been run on the child since Sunday—every single neurological indicator that could be taken while she was under sedation. Not a single abnormality had been found. Professional Lieberman, her staff Physician, had smugly diagnosed "chronic idiopathic catatonia." When Avery had consulted a dictionary and discovered that this clinical diagnosis meant, in plain language, "she won't move and she won't talk, and I don't know why," she had fired the man on the spot.

  The next Physician to examine Faith, having failed to find any organic cause for this behavior, suggested that the child might have some sort of emotional disturbance. Avery's reply had been a tight, lipless snarl that she did not need a hundred-mark-an-hour neurospecialist to tell her that a child who alternates catatonia and convulsion might be emotionally disturbed.

  Finally, desperately, Avery had decided to have the child fitted with an array of neural probes t
hat function rather like a nonsurgical version of a thoughtmitter; she felt that if she could only see what Faith saw, feel what Faith felt, she might be able to gain some understanding of what it was that caused the child so much suffering.

  She feared that she understood already. This neural probe was her last tight-lipped attempt to convince herself that she was wrong.

  The process of fitting and adjusting the neural probe distressed Faith to the point of convulsive seizure, despite the use of powerful tranquilizers. They had tried making the preliminary adjustments with the child under sedation, but when she had awakened, the seizures had redoubled. Any attempt to restrain Faith by any means beyond the touch of Avery's hand had shown similar results.

  And so: their final attempt would be made with only Avery's touch and voice to keep the child calm. Avery held the child's wrists and murmured alien words in her ear, phrases that came awkwardly from her hard mouth: "Shh, Faith. No one will hurt you. Grandmaman is here, and everything will be all right."

  If this didn't work, she would have to call in Tan'elKoth after all.

  Her silver crew cut drew down as her face twisted into a scowl that left her mouth hard and sharp as the edge of a scalpel. She had promised herself that she would exhaust every other option first. She had second-handed For Love of Pallas Rill far too many times; she knew too well that Tan'elKoth was not to be trusted.

  Not one little bit.

  Avery's grip tightened upon Faith's wrists as the technician made the attempt to slip the tiara once again around the child's hairline. The previous round of convulsions had been violent enough that Faith had even begun to flail with her left arm—her left arm that, like her legs, she had barely moved since her initial attack. This unexpected use of the left had slipped in the punch that had given Avery her fat lip with its trickle of blood.

  Much of Saturday afternoon, on the flight home and after, Avery had busied herself with the necessary arrangements: boarding school; a governess; a court order granting her title to all of Faith's clothing, toys, and other possessions from Michaelson's house; and a stream of outside salesfolk coming by the Shanks mansion with the array of clothing and accessories proper to a young Businessman's first months at school. She had spent more of the day with Faith herself than was, perhaps, absolutely necessary; she found that she took unexpected pleasure in the child's company. Her obedience that was never subservient, her clear and level gaze, her serene acceptance of Avery's every word coupled with fearless boldness and self-assurance—in nearly every way, Avery had thought wistfully, this was the child that she should have had for her own.