Caine Black Knife

“Caine.” Her voice goes severe. “The Order of Khryl has fought ogrilloi for generations. Protocols of prisoner exchange are well established-”

“Fuck your protocols. The Order’s got nothing to offer these bastards, and you know it.”

“Except their lives.”

I make a face. “Good luck with that, huh?”

Her voice rises. “No Soldier of Khryl is left in enemy hands. Ever. It is our Law.”

“Your Law. My ass.”

“Caine.” The severity becomes cold threat, and a hand that can crush bone to pudding seizes my shoulder. “The Law is sacred. I will not warn you again.”

I shrug out of her grip. “I don’t much like being touched that way.”

Her brow darkens but before she can open her mouth I plow on. “Tell them, Marade. You know this shit. You have to. Tell them what happens to captives of Black Knives. Tell them how many have escaped. How many have been ransomed. Ever. Come on. How many?”

Her face goes bleak. She says nothing. Which is an honest answer.

I turn to the others. “Boedecken bitches tell their cubs that if they don’t behave, Black Knives’ll get ’em. You follow? Black Knives are the grills that give other grills nightmares.”

Wish I could tell them about Mick Barand. About the bootleg cube of his last Adventure that I smuggled home when I was twelve. Wish I could tell them what the Black Knives did to him.

Wish I could tell them how Barand took it.

One of the toughest bastards in Studio history. How they broke him. How they made him sob and scream and beg. How at the end, he could only shiver. How it took him a week to die.

How he was dead two days, dead inside, before they finally killed him.

“People talk about fates worse than death. Nobody talks about a fate worse than getting caught by Black Knives. Because there fucking isn’t any.”

Do they get it? Can they get it?

Marade finally gets up dick enough to step in. “There is truth in what he says,” she admits. “Black Knives are feared among all the clans of the Boedecken. Feared and hated. They have abandoned even the debased gods worshipped in the Waste. Our best understanding, based on testimony of the few Black Knives the Order has ever taken-and based on the. . the. . the remains. . of their own prisoners that have been recovered-is that Black Knife society centers on sorcery of a. . primitive. . and grievously savage kind. Their aim of warfare is capture. Prisoners are. . ritually tormented, that their anguish might attract demons; their pain-their lives-are exchanged for certain dark powers. The torments of the Black Knives are known to be. . inventive.”

Which pretty well sums it up, but that dry-ass clinical shit won’t move anybody. “Are you hearing her?” I ask generally. “Let me translate. We could rape their wives, kill their grandmothers, eat their babies-we could assbone their goddamn lapdogs-and nothing they’d do to us would be any worse than it’s gonna be anyway. Understand? This shit’s lip-deep and the tide’s coming in.”

They look at each other, and they look at me, and after one long shared second of My, what a colorful turn of phrase he has, they go back to yapping among themselves like I never even opened my mouth, and I can’t make myself listen anymore.

I stare down at the coarse-flecked grain of the parapet’s granite and wish I could snarl and howl and bite off a chunk. I’m past the scared. I’m past the depressed. Now I’m pissed.

It’s not the dying. It’s not the torture. It’s that these cockknockers don’t give a shit what I say.

No.

It’s that there’s no goddamn reason they should give a shit. It’s that I haven’t done more. That I haven’t been more. That I have come all this way to get clipped as a fuck- my-bleeding-ass bit player.

I deserve better than this. I have earned better than this.

I should have been a star.

Rababal’s eyes shift and his lips twitch. “But-if some of us can escape, we can send help-even a full rescue; North Rahndhing is not so far away. It might be their best hope-”

“What, they have to work for a living, so they don’t even deserve a warning?” I lean close enough to bite a hunk out of his jowls. A whisper: “You want to run, you better start right now, you fat fuck. Before I kill you myself.”

I bet he tastes like pork.

Stalton shoulders in between us. “That’s too close, Caine. Back off. Now.”

I look up into his watery shit-colored eyes. “What if I don’t want to?”

Marade’s gauntlet falls on my shoulder like a steel brick. “Caine, now is not the time-”

“Now is the time. Now is the only time.” I smack her hand away and bare my teeth at the sudden heat this sparks in her eyes. “You pack of fucking pinheads-have any of you heard a word I’ve said? These are not animals. You can’t buy them off with some hunks of live goddamn bait. When they hit the camp, it won’t be some kind of mindless goddamn feeding frenzy. The first thing they’ll do with anybody they take is hurt them till they give you up. How long d’you think the porters will stand mute? Shit, why should they? After you’ve ditched them to be tortured to death?”

“Then what do you suggest? This is the only way any of us has a chance!” Rababal’s venomous glare would be more intimidating without the quiver in his jowls. “Unless you have a better idea?”

And-

Son of a bitch.

It starts way down below my chest, below my stomach, down behind my navel. Somebody just now struck a match under my balls and set my guts on fire.

“Yeah, funny thing.” The burn creeps north and ignites a smile. “I do have a better idea.”

I look from one to the next: Rababal pale and sweating, Marade glowering glamorously, Stalton going narrow-eyed, Tizarre swiping hair across her brow with a trembling hand, Pretornio twisting his prayer chain between his fingers, and I wonder: Can they see it?

Can they see the flame in my head?

Because all that lumpy grey mush-all the dying here before I ever have a real career, the sinking dread and black despair and the whiny why-me-god-why-me-is melting, hissing, and just downright smoking the fuck away. Screw these shit-swallowing bit parts. I never expected to live this long anyway.

But I am for motherfucking sure gonna make a star-quality exit.

“Simple. .” I talk slowly, carefully, so even Pretornio can understand. “Simple: we can’t outrun them. We can’t hide from them. We can’t buy them off. There’s only one way any of us will live through this.”

Their empty stares wait for me to fill them with hope. Losers.

Fuck hope.

“One way: We have to convince them that hunting us is a bad idea.”

Marade’s eyes are the first to spark. “You’re saying-”

“I’m saying.” I let the flame kindle my voice. “I’m saying we have to hurt them.”

And it’s working. I can see them warm it up, imagining-not in detail, not yet, just tasting the concept-and I can see heat swell inside them to melt that ice-numb dread. I turn from them and lean on the parapet, willing them to follow my gaze out into the badlands. Out at the dust and the Black Knives. Willing them to think with me: Why not? Let’s fuck ’em up.

“You think-” Tizarre swallows the quaver in her voice and starts over. “You think we can do it?”

A good lie trumps a bad truth. “I know we can.”

“And this-” Rababal’s platinum disk flickers faster and faster through his fingers. “This is our best