Caine Black Knife (2 page)
These waves of
living green looked like
less
to me.
The old
Boedecken had been exactly that: old. Carved by time into its true
shape. Harsh, jagged, scarred by existence, grim grey jaws locked
onto the ass end of life.
I’d kind
of liked it that way.
The river was
the only change up here that hadn’t surprised me. Whenever I
let myself, I could make the river’s birth happen inside my
head vivid as a lucid dream. Like lots of births, the river’s
had been ugly. A sea-wrack of pain and terror. A hurricane of blood.
The kind of fun
I hadn’t had in a long, long time.
I kept my head
down while the riverboat churned through the outer sprawl of
Purthin’s Ford. I wasn’t ready to look up at Hell.
I knew it was
there. When the light was good and the air was clear, I’d been
able to see the Spire for two days.
But I didn’t
look up now, while neat rows of white brick houses and red tile roofs
around well-ordered plazas commanded by greystone Khryllian vigilries
drifted south behind the docks and warehouses to either side, while
chill black shadows of high-curved bridges wiped the ship from bow to
wheel to stern, and the tiled arches were tight enough around the
deck that I could smell the soap somebody had used to scrub the
stonework clean.
I made a face
that cracked the dust on my cheeks. When I licked my lips, they
tasted like an open grave.
What was I,
superstitious? Didn’t feel like fear. Didn’t feel like
what people used to call post-traumatic stress disorder. Sure, if I
let it, every second of
Retreat from the Boedecken
would come
alive in my brain just like it was happening all over again. But that
shouldn’t scare me. Just the opposite.
This place
made
me. I came here a nobody on my way to never-was. I left here the
legend I always wanted to be.
Everything I’ve
ever done pursues me. Like a doppleganger, a fetch, my past creeps up
behind and strangles me in my sleep. When hunted by a monster in your
dreams, you save yourself by facing the monster and demanding its
name. In learning the monster’s name, you rob it of the power
to haunt you. But I was awake. And anyway I already knew my monster’s
name.
It was Caine.
My father used
to tell me that you can’t control the consequences of your
actions. You can’t even predict them. So all you can do is your
best, and all that matters is to make sure what you do will let you
look in the mirror and like what you see.
I can’t
remember the last time I liked what I see in the mirror.
There was a
writer from Earth’s twentieth century who wrote that “sin
is what you feel bad after.â€
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.
“
But
shit, I mean—here we have priests of Lipke’s god of war
and, and, uh, god of personal
combat—
â€
Light found me
on something soft and knobbly that rose along my side and under my
head and feet: a brocaded sofa, maybe.
I discovered I
could open my eyes.
The plaster
ceiling my blank stare found had been painted a tasteful ivory not
long ago, and somebody had come by with a feather plume within the
last day; the deep curls of the ornate crown molding showed no hint
of dust. A cobweb would have died of loneliness.
I tried to sit
up, but my gut spasmed and wouldn’t lift me. No pain, just
weakness: like I’d trained past muscle failure. Way past.
But no bandages.
No blood.
Somebody had
dressed me in a plain linen tunic and pants. My hand shook a little
as I pawed back the right-side hem of the tunic and rolled my head
over to find four ragged pink coins of fresh scar pocking my side,
neatly bracketing the flattened diamond of age-browned keloid where
an Ankhanan Household Knight had put a broadsword through my liver
about fifteen years ago.
I fingered the
fresh ones. Big enough to be something in the range of 00 buck—maybe
7mm, maybe bigger. Who knows what Khryllians load? Lucky I didn’t
take it in the face. Lucky old man.
Lucky to be
getting older.
There was
another new scar, long and thin and curving from my short ribs up
toward my nipple, too smooth to be a wound.
Surgery.
Rubber-band
muscles shivering with echoes of trauma, I managed to roll myself
onto my side. Then I had to rest.
Seated in a
severe chair by a severe window was a severe man in severe armor.
The chair was no
more than a stool with a back. The window was an arch in the wall,
plaster giving way to white stonework open to the westering sun
beyond. The man was thin, even in armor, with the long narrow head
and extravagantly arched nose and cheekbones of Lipkan nobility. His
hair was the color of his armor and cropped to the uniform length of
a fingerbreadth. His armor was starkly brushed and oiled carbon
steel, lacking entirely the ostentation of polish and design that is
the hallmark of the Khryllian Knight. Its sole ornament was a
stylized hand—the symbol of Dal’Kannith, Lipkan god of
war and father to Khryl—inlaid in electrum upon the upper left
of his cuirass, fingers open and palm facing forward, and on that
palm the golden Sunburst of Khryl.“
Freeman Shade.â€
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.
They roar toward
my back like a tornado on crank.
To hell with the
jinking, the juking and the fuck-my-ass serpentine: I take the last
ten meters at a dead sprint. A clattering rain of barbed arrows
rattles onto the gateway’s stone. One of them clips my butt as
I dodge around the upright and stumble into the linked shield-wall of
a dozen porters. The guy I slammed into doesn’t blink. None of
them do.
Twelve identical
thousand-yard stares: they don’t even see me.
Guess I bought
Pretornio enough time after all.
Three faces peer
over the wall-top. Fuckers. Wish I had something to throw at them.
“What happened to my
Cloak
?â€
The robe itched.
It smelled like meat.
I padded
barefoot up an endless spiral of stairs built out from an inner
cylinder of granite; the outer drum curved a good six feet clear of
the stairs’ empty edge, leaving a long, long drop to the
lamplit arc of the Lavidherrixium below.
My hair was
drying stiff, and my face felt tight and sticky, and my skin crawled,
and I couldn’t stop half a grimace that was at least part
smile. So many people would be shocked,
shocked,
to find me
suddenly fastidious about bathing in blood . . .
Funny thing:
most of them were dead. Really funny thing: I killed a lot of them
myself.
I’m not
known for my sparkling sense of humor.
Eventually the
smell of blood and lampblack gave way to clean after-rain and a
sunset breeze, and the steps became damp, and I rounded the curve of
the cylinder and found myself outside.
Way
outside.
An intricate
scale model of Purthin’s Ford speckled with pinpricks of
firelight stretched away below, and the sudden shift in perspective
from six lamplit feet to six moonlit miles kicked me behind the knees
and nearly pitched me headlong over the edge.
I lurched away
from the rim, slipping, pressing my back against the white-stone
curve of the Spire, bare feet scrabbling for purchase on the damp
stair, and I held himself there for a year or two until my vertigo
began to pass.
Eventually I
could breathe again.
“Holy
crap.
â€
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.
Screams of
burning ogrilloi echo off the stone. Eight or nine of them—a
swell bonfire down there.
The light they
cast gleams on steel teeth of two
kratrioi
closing in on them
from either end of the alley, and from up here it looks clean,
precise, even elegant: close-order drill on a parade ground.
Y’know,
for a weaselly little twitch, that Pretornio swings serious dick.
Caine.
I look up and
give a wave toward the impenetrable night-shadow that shrouds the
distant parapet where Tizarre and Rababà l stand.
Two packs
converging on your position. Get ready.
Yeah: they’ve
heard the screams. Running to get a look. And they’re gonna die
for it.
I turn toward
the featureless shadow-shapes of Marade and Stalton. “Here they
come. Fade.â€
I don’t
have a clear memory of the Rite of Investment, which is probably a
good thing. Like nearly everything else Khryllian—once you get
past the pretty armor and nice white buildings and the
defend-the-innocent-and-be-kind-to-peasants crap—what I do
recall is flat-out nasty.
It all took
place under the Regard of Khryl, which makes it bleed together in my
head, but there was some bare-fingered ripping of flesh involved,
hers or mine or both, and a lot of precious bodily fluid likewise,
and at one point I’m pretty sure I had my hand inside her rib
cage.
With my fingers
wrapped around her beating heart.
Get what I mean
about flat-out nasty?
Or maybe it was
her hand and my heart. Like I said, I’m not real clear on the
details. Somebody’s hand was inside somebody’s chest.
Khryllians are big on sticking their hands into people. Penetration
of flesh and shit. It’s that goddamn Healing of His. Once you
sand the corners off consequences, people start to get really fucking
weird.
Some people say
that’s what happened to me. But screw them anyway. None of them
could have lived through my consequences.
Anyway, I came
walking down out of there with my right fist full of metaphoric Holy
Foreskin, and it was not the most comfortable thing I’ve ever
held.
But I was
fucking right going to get my handjob’s worth.
Rounding the
last curve of stair down into the Lavidherrixium, rubbing
worm-threads of dried blood from my skin and hoping these sick
bastards at least had a goddamn shower I could use before I had to go
out in public, I didn’t notice how the murmur of breeze above
became the murmur of voices below until the voices took on actual
words.
“. . . and
that, my Lord, is a matter to offer up unto the Regard of the Lord of
Valor. Which is none other than my full intention here, and which
you, my Lord, have a truly astonishing lack of authority to prevent.â€
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.
The middle
distance hums with echoes of roars and bellowing: somebody’s
still fighting, a tier or two below, close enough that I can hear
them over the rising wind. But it’s not them I have to find. As
long as they’re fighting, they don’t need me.
Hello?
Goddammit. Hey! Over here!
Come on, come
on
—
Nothing.
Standing in open
moonlight waving at shadows on the parapet is only making me feel
like an idiot. Tizarre must be busy with the others. Or she’s
just not there. Or—
Flame explodes
in a brilliant surging tidal bore along the face of the vertical
city. Above flat black stone, ragged billows of sunfire claw against
the wind.
Shit.
That’s not
the
or
I was hoping for.
>>scanning
fwd>>
His Minor Shield
is warm as flesh, a curve of softly shimmering almost-glass that
gives a little under my hand. I’d lean on it while I get my
breath but if he passes out it’ll dump me on my face, so I
settle against the age-rounded stone of the narrow alleyway instead.
But even leaning is too much: my eyelids go heavy and my knees go to
cloth and fuck me stand up fuck my ass stand
up—
Balancing
precariously on someone else’s legs, I try again. “Come
on, goddammit,
talk
to me. Which way did they
take
her?â€
I must
say
,
Freeman Shade, I am, ha-ha, hrm, favorably impressed by your
piety—
â€
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.
Sffrins a lxry.
Heerz manser.
Here.
Is my.
Answer.
Maxmum bad.
Snot nough.
Not.
Enough.
Hav topen meyes.
Have to.
Fuh kk kk k—
Fuck.
Me.
God.
Hrrr.
Air. Air is all.
Air’s
everything but—
So . . .
Tired . . .
But.
Don’t need
air to talk to
you.
Technology is a
wonderful fucking thing.
I just—
Need.
To
hurt
more.
It’s
night.
Must be night.
No sun on my skin.