Caine Black Knife

It’s heavy, and warm with the damp heat of his sweat. Almost as long as my forearm, its wine-colored wood is dense as steel, inlaid with an impossibly intricate lattice of fine platinum wire. The butt end swells to an ovoid the size of a hen’s egg, rounded and smooth, and it nestles into the hollow of my palm like it grew there. The balance point is a bare fingerbreadth from the butt; the griffinstone inside must be a monster.

A bladewand. I can’t fucking believe it.

A breath is all it takes to summon the limpid passionless clarity of the Control Disciplines. They’re not so different from mindview. My palm tingles with energy.

Hmm. The Lightweaver used to do it kinda like-

I point the wand at the passage gap and reach into myself, summoning pure concentration, feeling for the trigger point with my mind. Nothing happens.

Shit.

Rababal’s still sputtering. “But-but-but it’s magickal, don’t you understand?”

I do understand. I did a year of Battle Magick at the Conservatory-but if I’d been worth a wet fart at it, I wouldn’t be here now. .

“You’re no thaumaturge, Caine. How can you expect to-”

“Shut up.”

“Maybe I should take it,” Tizarre says uncertainly. “I mean, I’m good with a blade, and-”

“Shut up.”

Less effort. Just an intention. A feel. .

A surge inside my right arm: not a tingle, not the electric sizzle that Telukhai always felt, but an actual surge like a tide of hot oil pulsing from my spine to my fingertips-

“Really, Caine, you’re only embarrassing yourself. Years of training-”

Translucently shimmering blue-white energy licks along the platinum lattice and stretches out from the wand’s tip: a plane as wide as my hand and about three meters long that enters the millennial stone of the crest passage wall without resistance. It lasts for only one heart-thumping second, but that’s plenty of time for me to give the wand a twitch and carve off a hunk of rock bigger than my head.

Ohhh, yeah.

The hunk slides sideways and crashes down the ramp. The cut is smooth as glass. The bladewand’s butt is hot in my hand.

Now Tizarre and Stalton both have that what-the-fuck-kind-of-animal-is-this look on their faces too. Rababal breathes: “Who are you?”

I hold up the wand to catch the last rays of sunset. Platinum traceries shine like smears of blood.

I am really looking forward to this.

››scanning fwd››

“You know what we’re up against now.”

They stare at me from their huddles and clusters in the deep vaulted shadows of the immense passage hall, faces pinched and green with dread. Moonrise drips ghost-milk down the crest passage behind me.

“There’s no way out. There’s no way back. There is no parley. No appeal. They’re gonna come, and we’re gonna die. All of us. We can’t even slow them down. All we’ve got is a choice. Die tonight, or die from now till next month. Screaming.”

Not exactly St. Crispin’s Day, but at least I have their attention.

“I am going to die tonight. So is Marade, and Pretornio. Stalton and Rababal and Tizarre.” I nod at the cook, and his lover next to him. “So are you, Nollo. And you, Jashe. And every single one of you. Anybody who doesn’t will wish he had. Say it with me: I am going to die tonight.”

They look at me like I asked them to do the chicken dance.

“Come on. Say it. I am going to die tonight.”

Slowly, with a kind of reluctant surly stubbornness, they mumble their way through it.

“Where I come from, there used to be this, like, nation of warriors. When they were going into battle, they’d tell each other, Today is a good day to die. And they’d believe it.” I nod toward the sunset behind me. “Well, for us it’s night. This night. And I don’t know how good it is, but it’s the only one we’ve got.”

I make a fist and hold it out. “Tonight is a good night to die.”

They look at each other, at the niter-scaled walls, at the shadowed vault above. Anywhere but at me.

Christians like to say the truth will make you free. Guess I’ve got the wrong truth.

“Listen-” I let my fist go slack and rub my forehead. “Listen: I’ve got my share of problems, y’know? You all know it. I’m an asshole. Nobody likes me. Sometimes I don’t like me much either.”

I give them a second to disagree. Nobody jumps in. Big goddamn surprise. “

Shit weighs down on me, y’know? Like it does on everybody, I guess. I worry what the fuck I’m doing with my life. I’ve got a sick dad, and I can’t take care of him, and this girl I’m hot for thinks I’m a jerk, and shit, y’know, she’s right, but somehow I just can’t help my-” I manage to avoid looking at her. “Ahh, forget all that, it’s not important.

“Here’s the point: that’s all future stuff, y’know? Everything you worry about. Everything that keeps you awake at night. All the shitty things the world has waiting for all of us. You know: Failure. Old age. Loneliness. Heartbreak. Cancer. Whatever.

“All that is gone, now. You get it? That’s all shit to worry about tomorrow-but we won’t have to. Not ever again.

“For us, there is no tomorrow.

“Think about it. We have nothing left to worry about. Nothing. Shit, those Black Knives out there tonight? They’re giving us a gift. Because all that bad stuff, all the rotten fucking shit that could possibly happen for the rest of our lives. . won’t. Because the only rest of our lives we have left is a few minutes to decide how we’re gonna die.”

“What difference does that make?” somebody says. “Dead is dead.”

“Don’t care how you die? You don’t even have to leave this room. Just step over here.” I open my arms, offering. “You won’t feel a thing.”

No takers. No surprise.

“I’ll tell you how I’m gonna die.”

A long, slow look, eye to eye to eye. I let that spark in my balls heat up my voice. “I’m gonna drown in their smoking fucking blood.”

A muffled snort from the shadows: sounds like Stalton.

Thought he’d like that one.

“I will choke to death on their raw fucking brains. You follow? The cocksmoke that finally kills me will carry the marks of my teeth into his fucking grave-and when somebody digs him up a thousand years from now, they’ll point to the scar on his throat and they’ll say, ‘You see that? That was from Caine.’ ”

The passage hall goes quiet, and some of the eyes on me go cold now: the open-behind stare of surrendered hope. Good for them.

Good for me.

“I can’t say what happens in the next life. Or if there is a next life. You want that shit, talk to Pretornio, or Marade. I will tell you this, though. There’s one afterlife we know we can have: we can make the kind of fight here that will become a fucking legend.”

I come to my feet. “To hell with the next world. Let’s be immortal in this one. We’re gonna die anyway. Let’s do it right.”

“Yeah?” Sounds like the same guy, there in the darkness. “But who’s gonna know? We’ll all be dead. Nobody will even know this ever happened-”

“We will be remembered.” God’s own truth: this could be Adventure of the Year. I’ll be famous. Hell, they’ll be famous too. Dying in front of an audience of millions.

Wish I could be there to enjoy it.

“Believe it.” I give them a stare like the truth is a nail I can hammer into their heads with my eyes. “Our story will be known.”