Caine Black Knife

I sighed. “Yeah, well, it’s a dream I have. That’s all.”

Orbek spat into his hands and slickened his spine ruff; it sprang back to vertical, wet and gleaming. “Pull up a floor, hey? Don’t look so good, little brother. Better sit before you fall.”

In those yellow eyes was a wariness that could instantly trip hostile; this somehow made everything easier. I can always fall back on being an asshole.

I squinted at the ogrillo bitch. “Kinda old for you, isn’t she?”

The bitch had slagged her way over to a bundle of soggy blankets that seemed to be the pit’s closest thing to a bed, and she lay on them now, watching incuriously, one big-knuckled hand rubbing idly between her legs. “Call her Kaiggez,” Orbek said softly. “I’d introduce you, but I dunno who you are today.”

I could feel the Knight Attendant watching through the dripping grille above. I nodded to the bitch. “Dominic Shade. Don’t get up. I don’t like hugs and there’s no fucking way I’m gonna shake that hand.” Her expression was unreadable. “Korloggil nas paggarnik, paggtakkunni? ” she said softly. “Perrlag Nazutakkaarik rint diz Etk Perrog’k?”The wet trickle down my spine got colder. I do know a few words of Etk Dag, nowadays. One of them is Nazutakkaarik. It’s a nickname. A title. The Black Knives had called me that. A few of them. Toward the end. When only a few were left.

I shifted my weight, sliding my back along the wall toward the corner. “He told you who I am.”

Orbek smirked around his tusks. “She don’t talk Westerling, little brother. Says she’s happy to meet her brother-in-law.”

“Brother-in-law my ass.” A creeping flush of anger drove off some of the chill. I squeezed my voice down to a blurred snarl, mindful of ears above. “What did she really say? ‘Tell the Skinwalker he’s welcome in the Boedecken’?”

“Hnh.” Orbek’s smirk never flickered. “We don’t call it Boedecken. We call it Our Place.”

“You got a hell of an attitude for somebody who’s gonna die tomorrow.”

“Maybe I should snivel like a human, hey? That make you happy? Because you being happy, that’s what I live for.”

“I didn’t come all this way to be fucked with, big dog.”

“Rather fuck with her, little brother.” The young ogrillo spread hands the size of frying pans. “Wanna watch some more?”

“Oh, sure. Like that horse cock of yours won’t give me nightmares already.” I shook my head. “You got nothing better to talk about than the old days? About the-what do you call it? The Horror?”

“Talk? Haven’t been talking.” White flame glowed in the back of his eyes: nighthunter retinas catching and concentrating the dim gaslight that reflected down off the rain-shined walls. “Been listening.”

“Uh.” Like any sucker punch, it didn’t really hurt. But it rocked me. It knocked me to pieces and stirred up the chunks.

Orbek lowered himself to the blankets beside her, his back against the wall, one huge arm curling protectively around her shoulders. She snuggled down into his lap and kissed the inside of his forearm.

He twitched his tusks. “Back then, she’s terkullik. Creche-maid. First bred and nursing. See this?” With his free hand, he stroked a rumpled sheet of black scar that spread up her left thigh to her flank. Where her left hind dug should have been was only a dark knot. “Know where she gets it?”

“I can guess.”

“Don’t have to. She gets it carrying pups out of the fire, little brother. You know which fire. Dead pups.”

The light in the back of his eyes shimmered like moonlit ice. “Her dead pups.”

She reached up and caressed his arm, drawing it around her face. Her thick purple tongue oozed out and licked fog-beads from the stump of his fighting claw. Her gaze held no anger. No hostility. Only a fiercely concentrated watchfulness: one predator staring down another.

Over the body of our prey.

Those stirred-up chunks suddenly clicked together into a new shape. “Oh,” I said. “I get it now.”

“Do you?”

“Sure. Got yourself a Black Knife bitch.” I lowered myself into a somewhat hip-creaking version of an ogrillo squat. “She’s up the pipe, huh?”

His tusk-display went fierce. “I’m only half eligible.”

“How many? You know yet?”

“Four. We go to a norulaggik for a sniffie before I get bagged. She says three bucks and a bitch.”

I let myself smile, really smile, for the first time since I boarded the steamboat below Thorncleft. “Orbek. Stud-daddy Black Knife.”

The hairless meat of the ogrillo’s brows drew together. “How come you go happy all the sudden?”

“You fucking knucklehead. Ever stop to think I might have something to say about Black Knives coming back to the Boedecken? Think about who I am, for shit’s sake. What’d you think I was gonna do when I found out? Throw you a party?”

The young ogrillo seemed to draw in upon himself: a smaller target. “Guess what? Don’t think about you.”

I inclined my head toward the steady stare of his bitch. “She does.”

“Yeah, well,” he said, “she’s got reason.”

“Shit, Orbek, I came all this way worrying I might have to kill you.”

The wary cold distance started to drain out of Orbek’s eyes, and he half-relaxed with a friendly snort. “No worry there. Champion’s got the killing part handled, hey?”

“Easy enough to fix.”

“You think so?”

“Sure. Walk into that arena and kiss her feet.”

Orbek’s head lowered like a boar’s. “Can’t do that.”

“Sure you can.”

Tusks swung side to side. “Black Knives don’t kneel.”

“My ass. That’s what knees are for.”

His head ratcheted lower. “Can’t.”

“What are you afraid of? The shit with Kopav? It’s handled, Orbek. I’ve squared it already.”

Orbek’s head jerked back up, and that wary light flicked back into his eyes. “You know about Kopav?”

“Everything I need to.” I cast a significant glance up toward the fog and the night. “I have a highly placed source.”

“Him?” Orbek’s nod was slow, understanding. His gaze still teetered on the edge of hostile. “Huh. What’s He want with me?”

“I don’t know. And I don’t give a shit. We’ll worry about Him after you live through this, huh?”

“I take a shot at Him once. You know that? Well, almost. On Assumption Day. Maybe He holds a grudge.”

“Maybe He thinks He’s doing you a favor.”

“And maybe khoshoi fly out of my butt. Needs to mind His own business, hey?” The young ogrillo’s arm tightened around the bitch’s meaty shoulders. “So do you.”

“You are my business, knucklehead. Give the cocksuckers what they want, then take your wife home and live happily ever goddamn after, will you?”

“Terlukk pagganik rez haggallo, paggtakunni,” the bitch murmured with an air of lazy malice. “Utoppik negge tesslent jeroppik Black Knife? Pok ler Limp Dick?”

“Black Knife ekk,” Orbek growled under his breath. “Paggano rez hagallo Black Knife. Keptarrol Black Knife.”

“What’s that about?”

He muttered, “She asks what she should tell my boys when they’re born. Is their clan Black Knife? Or Limp Dick?”