Caine's Law (28 page)

Ah. He knew what page they were on now. “That’s something a lot of us try.”

Her reply was to turn her back on him.

“Sucks when you finally discover it doesn’t work, huh?”

With a faint sigh, she sagged against the bars, reaching up to hold on to them behind her head. “And how—” Her voice was muffled. Blurred. “—how did Marade handle … this discovery?”

“She didn’t. She … couldn’t, I guess. It was too much for her.” The memory burned even now. Working her was working him too. “She … did something stupid, and got herself killed.”

“In Yalitrayya. Searching with you for the crown of Dal’kannith Thousandhand.”

“Yeah.”

“Were you with her when she died?”

“No.” He had to look at the floor. “I was late.”

Days late. Remembering made him dizzy with nausea.

“Her Legend is … silent … on her death.”

“It was ugly.” Whatever hell Berne was burning in wasn’t half hot enough. “Worse than the Black Knives. Worse than you can imagine.”

“Would you …” Her voice had faded into a faint, sad yearning as though she called to him from far away. “Would you have saved her, if you could? Not from her death. From her pain.”

“Oh, shit …” he breathed. “Jesus suffering Christ, what a fucking idiot I am …”

Obvious. So obvious a blind man could have seen it from the other side of town.

When she’d figured out who he was, it must have seemed like a gift from Heaven. A secret meeting, alone and unarmed, upon the holiest sanctum of the Order. Bathed in the blood of heroes to wash her sins away …

Handing a loaded gun to a man who had killed just about every kind of creature that flies, walks, or crawls in the fucking dirt.

And when he didn’t …

The deal. The deal with a man who had killed a god. A win-win.

Because she knew that jobs he takes tend to get done, and people who hire him tend to end up dead.

Jesus.

He tongued the pick and tension bar out of his cheek. This might be kind of tricky.

He cleared his throat, then coughed the tools into his fist.

“For Marade? I would have done just about anything.” He started on the left shackle, working by feel, talking to cover any metal-on-metal clicks. “Whatever your uncle told you about me, I’m not a monster.”

“I hope I have seen that already.”

The shackle opened in his hand, and he set to work on the other. “I don’t know her Legend. I don’t know what she said of—well, of us. There was a … moment … in the dark.”

“She wrote that you refused to take her life.”

That was one way of putting it. “Yeah.”

“She wrote that the darkness let her say things—do things—that she never could have said or done in the light. It made her see herself without eyes. She said it was a test. Of her virtue, her courage, and her faith. The direst test she ever faced.”

Her voice hushed to barely a whisper. “And that the only reason she passed it was you. Your faith in her gave her faith in herself.”

He had that taste in his mouth again. “It wasn’t like that.”

“It was for her.”

“Okay. Okay, yeah,” he said like saying that could make it hurt less. “I guess she wouldn’t lie.”

“Of course not.”

“It’s just …” He had to look down. “I wasn’t trying to help her. I was trying to fuck her.”

“This might explain why this memory is for you only painful, where for her it inspired greatness.”

Yeah, okay. He’d had enough of beating his skull against every cobble on memory lane. “So I wouldn’t do that for her. That’s the point. I wouldn’t take her life to save her from pain. Not even for Marade. Not even facing what we faced.”

“Ah.”

“So what in the fucking universe makes you think I’d do it for
you
?”

She made a sound like she’d been punched in the throat.

He pitched his voice low. Gentle. As kind as he could make it, which wasn’t very. No practice. “He can’t read your mind, y’know.”

Her back stiffened. “What?”

“Not unless you’re thinking
at
Him. Almost subvocalizing. Otherwise, He has to guess, based on what He can feel you feeling.” He chewed the
inside of his lip while he got the right shackle open. “Yeah, you probably know that already: you’re pretty good at talking around shit.”

“I—” Her voice went thick, half-gargled. “I—”

“Can’t even tell me about Him, can you? Can’t tell me how He’s in your head. What He makes you do. Can’t tell anyone. Somebody might stop it.”

“Don’t—”

“I know you can’t ask me. And I can’t save you. Not in the way you want.” One shackle in each hand and the chain between them, he rose. “But I might be able to help you, if you’ll let me.”

“Stop—
stop
—you don’t
understand—
”

“Can you
not
do things? Will He let you?” He moved toward her, his bare feet utterly silent on the scuffed plank floor. The chain hung without swinging; he measured the back of her cowl through the bars. “Will He let you not move?”

With a shuddering gasp she burst away from the bars, invisibly fast: frames cut out of the film inside his head. She flattened herself against the wall across from him, trembling.

Nodding, he dropped the chain, and showed her his empty hands. “Listen to me. I know some things about being godseized, all right? Not just Monastic shit. I know what’s happening to you. I even have a pretty good idea how it feels.”

He went to the cell door. Across the walkway she shivered against the stone. “I don’t need to know how it started. What damage somebody did to you. What made you think it’d be worth it. I only need to know how much you can do for me.”

“
For
you? For
you
?” Her voice went shrill. Her gloved hands crushed chunks from the wall. “Why did you have to
speak
? If you even
hint
—I’ll have to … have to …”

She squeezed shut her eyes. “I might have to, anyway.”

“How about you walk out of here? Turn around and just walk away.”

“I … can’t. I can’t. You’ve said too much. Too much already.” Her shivering deepened toward tremors.

“Angvasse, listen to me. I will not harm you. Ever.”

“We both know your word means nothing.”

He knew
we both
didn’t mean her and him.
We both
meant her and Him. “Everybody knows lots of shit about me. Some of it’s even true. Like, for example, mercy killing isn’t my thing.”

“
Mercy
isn’t your thing.”

“Yeah. I’m not the guy who puts you out of your misery. I’m the guy
who makes your misery worse. Khryl knows it. That’s why He let you hire me.”

“To
torture
me?”

“Gods are what they are because we are what we are. There’s not much you can do about it.”

“Do you want to
see
?” Tears now streamed from her swollen eyes. “Do you want to see how much I can do?”

“Okay,” he said, low. “Okay, it’s okay. Relax.”

With that invisible speed she snatched up the Automag, thumb on the trigger and her mouth wide open, and when she lifted it blue faerie fire flared from her shoulder to her wrist, and one inch shy of pointing at her face, the muzzle froze.

The air around her shimmered. Hummed with power. Veins bulged in her corded neck and spidered across her forehead. A spray of blood burst from her nose and her face was turning black and he said, “Okay,
stop
it,
enough
, for shit’s sake!” and she dropped the pistol back onto the table and half fell against the wall behind her, gasping.

“Do you
see
?” Her sobbing was open now. “I only wanted … it wasn’t supposed to be like this. I only wanted … to be
good
at it. I didn’t even need to be a great Knight. Just a good one. And now … and now …”

She sagged on the wall, her face twisting, tears streaking the blood from her nose. “There is … so little left of me …”

“Fuck me,” he breathed, and she startled him with a sharp bitter laugh.

“That I can still do,” she said, straightening. “That is nearly all I can do.”

“Um, hey, y’know—”

She pushed herself off the wall and leaned toward him, a dangerously manic light kindling in her eye. “Is that what you want? You want me to
fuck
you?”

He stepped back. “It’s a figure of speech.”

“How did you get those shackles off, I wonder?” Her hands now gripped the bars of the cell door near the lock. Without any sign of effort she gave the door a wrench that split open the lock with a brief hoarse squall. “Were you not searched? A poor job we did of it, then.”

Way too soon he found a cold stone wall against his back. “Look, you don’t really want to do this—”

“Marade Sunflash herself gave her virtue to you. How can I do less?”

An eyeblink brought her to him and then her arms were around him and her hands were on him and his ribs groaned inside him like the cell’s bars had in her hands. Her face met his and her breath tasted of mint and
honey and she crushed her lips against his teeth and drew them off with blood.

“
Stop
 …” Breath crushed out of his lungs and black clouds bloomed in his head and he fell back on instinct: a quick snap smashed his forehead into her nose and blood sprayed down their faces and she moaned.

Not in pain.

“Fight me,” she whispered. “
Fight
me, Caine …”

Something in how she said the name brought blood thundering to his ears. And not just his ears. She pulled her face back so that her eyes of indigo could gaze into his while her splattered nose rebuilt itself and she murmured, “And where did you hide those lock picks?” and her gloved fingers began to force open his asshole.

“Fucking
stop
it!” he said, but he could say no more because her mouth was against his again and her tongue forced into his mouth. He bit down, hard, blood and live meat between his teeth, and she released his mouth, moaning as her tongue knit until she could gasp, “Yes …”

He worked one arm up between them, the back of his hand brushing a bullet-hard nipple, and hooked two fingers into the notch of her collarbone. Slow steady pressure forced her gagging backward enough to let him talk. “Angvasse—this is rape. You understand?
Rape
. Is that what you want?”

She released his ass and slid one hand around to his penis.

He looked down. He was hard as drop-forged steel.

“You want me,” she murmured. “You do.”

He couldn’t deny it. “Maybe a guy likes to be asked.”

“Is that it? You find me insufficiently
polite
?”

That and he was a little down on sex with suicidal superhuman killing machines.

“Please, then, Caine. Please,” she said, and dropped to her knees in front of him and slid her mouth slowly, firmly, inexorably, down over the length of his cock.

He nearly lost his concentration right there, because he was remembering something Tourann had said about Khryllians and their firearms.

They don’t do autoloaders here.

“Well, when you put it
that
way …” Gently, he teased himself back out of her mouth. He said, “Wait. Wait, Angvasse. Get the gun. It’ll be better.”

She frowned up at him.

“Do it. You’ll like this. I promise.”

She got up and reached through the bars for it. He followed her and
slid an arm around her from behind. Her breasts were small, almost hard as muscle; his other hand slid down the back of her pants, and she shuddered. “That button by your thumb. That’s the clip release. Press it.”

She did, and the clip of tristacks clattered to the floor. “And now?”

“Give it to me and pull down your pants.”

She twisted to face him. “What?”

“Come on.” He gathered her to him and found her blood-smeared lips with his mouth. “Come on. It’s what you like, isn’t it? I’ll hold it on you while I fuck you. I can hold it to your head.” He slid a hand between her legs. “Or you can take it in your mouth.”

She shuddered against him and clung to him with arms that could crush his bones to powder. “But—but He—”

“It’s unloaded. He won’t stop you. Why should He?”

“Yes. Yes, of course. Unloaded.” She brought the barrel to her mouth, tentatively, testing. Then her tongue flicked out along the brushed steel. Her eyes drifted closed. “Oh, yes. Oh, Caine,
yes—
”

“Go on, try it,” he murmured against her neck. “Let me watch you try it.”

He took half a step back as she slid the muzzle in between her lips. Her other hand slid inside her pants, and she squeezed the trigger.

Her head exploded.

Didn’t even make much noise: a soggy handclap, no more. Her torso twisted and her legs buckled and she fell into a heap of white and scarlet and he stood over her corpse with shreds of her face dripping down his chest.

He said, “You’re welcome.”

Firearms were new around here, and autoloaders were unknown, and neither she nor her god had understood how an autoloader, once fired, carries the next round in the chamber. Live and learn.

Well: learn.

He knelt beside her, scrubbing blood and tissue from his face and hair onto her cloak. Then he took the Automag from her hand, slapped in a fresh clip, and racked the slide. By the time he stood again, her corpse was wreathed in blue flame.

“See you,” he muttered, and slipped out of the cell.

The shattered rags of flesh at her temples were already blunting and folding themselves back together. The larger hunks of skull and brain sprayed across the cell still looked fresh and solid, but smaller blood spatters disappeared and the larger pools shrank as though they were evaporating.

He pulled on his pants and slipped his tunic over his head and jammed feet into his boots without bothering with socks. He safetied the Automag, tossed it onto the leather wrap, and bundled his gear together, and even though he had some time before the god could Humpty Dumpty her head, he ran down the stairs, cut through the stable, and trotted away along the alley as fast as he dared.

This was shaping up to be a busy day.

He didn’t even make it a block.

He got to the alley’s mouth and stopped and stood, breathing harder than he had to. He stared out along the street, but what he was seeing was the inside of the subgarrison cell. What he was feeling was the warm plash of a woman’s tears on his bare chest, years ago, when she held him in her lap in a room dark beyond the memory of day, and spoke gently of people they thought they’d never see again.