Caine Black Knife

It drops out of the light, swallowed by the shadows below. A lifetime passes while I wait for the stillness to give up a faint clatter of metal on stone.

A presence at my shoulder: Stalton. “What’d you do that for?”

“I got it off a dead man,” I tell him without moving. “I don’t want it to pass on the same way.”

“Shit, Caine, you didn’t want it, you coulda just gave it to me-”

I turn just enough for him to see the look in my eyes. “Maybe you don’t understand what I just said.”

I leave him there to think about it and go back to the other partners.

Far out in the badlands, the vast dust cloud swells wide, one thin arc of its uppermost reach glowing in the last of the sunset. Marade’s staring at that cloud like she can read her future in it. And she can.

So can I.

Rababal and Tizarre stand like they froze solid in the middle of an involuntary flinch. They’re staring at a hundred-odd ogrilloi trotting toward us along the escarpment, not more than a mile away. Even as we watch, their gorilla-bear lope fades to a walk, then they start dropping into that wait-until-dark squat.

“How did they get up here?” Rababal fumbles with his platinum disk, drops it, and lets it chinng into the rocks at his feet. He doesn’t even look down. “How did they get here ahead of us?”

“They didn’t.” I nod back toward the city. “They’re still down there. These are new.”

“But-but-what are they doing up here?”

Marade murmurs the textbook answer. “When marching a large body of troops parallel to a major geographic feature-a mountain range, say, or this rift-cliff-you need a screen of skirmishers on the far side, in case-”

“Marching troops?”

Chrome steel creaks as she slowly shakes her head. “Or whatever.”

He follows her gaze out to the vast dust cloud now disappearing into the horizon’s shadow. “Um. Oh. Um, I see.” His nervy voice, finally, has gone calm and quiet. For the first time, he sounds like a grown-up. “I understand. That cloud-that’s not a storm.”

She nods, still staring at her future. She doesn’t seem to like the looks of it.

Yeah, well, me neither.

Tizarre’s got that wild look around her eyes again. “Where the hell are the horses? Where’s Kess and the grooms?”

I wave toward another trail of rising dust, upland toward the sinking sun.

“Bastard,” she breathes. “That ratsucking bastard-”

“Leave the language to me,” I mutter. “You don’t have the touch.”

That wild look of hers takes on a dangerous calculation. Even money says she’s running through all the magicks she knows that can hit them from here. “They haven’t gotten very far-”

“They’re plenty far. But they won’t get a lot farther; that dust isn’t theirs. It’s from Black Knives on their trail.”

Stalton’s at my shoulder again. “More Black Knives?” he breathes, blinking. Yeah: weak eyes. “Are you pulling my dick? How many?”

A sign that can’t unclench the fist in my gut. A shrug that can’t shift the weight on my shoulders. That’s all the answer he should need.

“Come on, Caine. You had the glass. How many are out there?”

So I tell him. “All of them.”

››scanning fwd››

I stick out a hand to stop the two thaumaturges in the stair shaft to the escarpment’s top. “What d’you got left for Fireballs?”

Tizarre looks at Rababal. He makes a face. “A, well, a dozen. Or so.”

“A dozen. Fuck my ass.”

“Had I known how splendidly your master plan would work,” he says through his teeth, “I would have been more conservative-”

“Yeah, whatever.” Don’t panic. Do not panic.

Panic-

Huh. Funny.

What panic?

Y’know, all I’m really getting right now is that hot dark tingle just above my balls. Maybe I really am one stone batshit son of a bitch.

I’m looking forward to this. .

“Okay. Okay, look, can you Reach from mindview?”

“Telekinesis?” He frowns. “Well, yes, a little. I’m not strong.”

“Won’t have to be. Collect canteens from the porters. Dump the water and fill ’em half full of lamp oil. Drop a buckeye in each, you follow?”

His frown turns appreciative. “I believe I do.”

“Tizarre: you can Nightsee, can’t you? Can you Whisper?”

She starts to nod, stops. Her feathery brows draw together. “I should be able to. Should. Something’s weird in the Flow here. No promises.”

“No excuses either. Make it work.”

She looks dubious. “The moon’s barely past first quarter, and it won’t rise till after midnight. Even if I can tell you where they are, you can’t fight in the dark.”

I nod toward Rababal. “You’ll be with him.”

“I don’t get it.”

“The oil canteens,” Rababal murmurs.

“Yup.” She’s recon. He’s artillery. “We’ll fight by the light of burning ogrilloi.”

The stubby necromancer stares at me like he’s never seen me before. Like I’m some kind of weird-ass animal and he’s trying to calculate how dangerous I might be.

He has no fucking idea. “What else you got?”

“For combat?”

“No, shithead. For a bad attack of drizzledick.”

“I, uh-Minor Shields. Some. Er, five. Just-y’know. For protection.”

“And?”

He glances away. Rising color warms the bottom folds of his jowls. “And, well, I suppose. .” he says diffidently. Offhand, as if it only just occurred to him. “I mean, y’know, there’s my bladewand. .”

“A bladewand?” I ratchet my dropped jaw back into place and lean so close that when he licks his lips I can smell his spit. “You have a bladewand? And you let me walk out that gate with nothing but a motherfucking knife up my sleeve?”

“Well, I, ah-it’s magick, you see-”

“You don’t want to know what I see.” I open a hand. “Give it.”

“But-but-”

“Give it, or my hand to fucking God I will take it off your body.”

Behind me, Stalton takes a step back up the crest passage. “Caine, you can’t just push him around like-”

I stop him with a look over my shoulder. “Ever see a move like the one I pulled on that fucker outside?”

His answer is a measuring squint.

“You’re about to bet your life I don’t have another.”

Color rises in his face. “That’s not-”

I shove my open hand at Rababal. “Now.”

He fumbles the bladewand out from inside his vest. It’s all I can do not to snatch it. I’ve never seen one in person. Not even secondhand, not in maybe fifteen years. . not since I was a kid, playing bootleg cubes of the Light-weaver. . then he holds it out to me, and I take it.

And I’m holding it. In my very own hand. I really am.