Caine Black Knife

The middle distance hums with echoes of roars and bellowing: somebody’s still fighting, a tier or two below, close enough that I can hear them over the rising wind. But it’s not them I have to find. As long as they’re fighting, they don’t need me.

Hello? Goddammit. Hey! Over here!

Come on, come on-

Nothing.

Standing in open moonlight waving at shadows on the parapet is only making me feel like an idiot. Tizarre must be busy with the others. Or she’s just not there. Or-

Flame explodes in a brilliant surging tidal bore along the face of the vertical city. Above flat black stone, ragged billows of sunfire claw against the wind.

Shit.

That’s not the or I was hoping for.

››scanning fwd››

His Minor Shield is warm as flesh, a curve of softly shimmering almost-glass that gives a little under my hand. I’d lean on it while I get my breath but if he passes out it’ll dump me on my face, so I settle against the age- rounded stone of the narrow alleyway instead. But even leaning is too much: my eyelids go heavy and my knees go to cloth and fuck me stand up fuck my ass stand up-

Balancing precariously on someone else’s legs, I try again. “Come on, goddammit,talk to me. Which way did they take her?”

On the Shield’s far side, Rababal’s still fumbling inside the bloody tangle of his cape. The arrow shaft sticking out from his shattered collarbone twitches in a different rhythm from the hitching pulse of the one through his lung.“

Bastard . . stay there, you . . bastard,” he gasps. He tries to push himself up the wall of the little cul-de-sac, but his legs are worse than mine and he sags back down onto the sand drift in the corner.

“Just stay there. . They’ll be back, be back any second now. Just-I just. . fucker. You fucker.”

He says it like it’s the worst word he knows.

“Before-before I do it. . all I want-I want is-I want to watch them kill you. I hope they. . uh. Uh. I hope it hurts.”

So he’s the kind who needs to blame somebody. Maybe he’s got reason.

“Look, forget me, huh? Think about Tizarre. You want to leave her with them?”

“I don’t. . don’t care,” he wheezes. “Ahhh. . hkk. There it is.” One of his hands comes out of his cape holding a buckeye. “My last. . I’ve been saving. .”

“Listen, goddammit!” I give his Shield a solid whack with the toe of my boot, and the impact feeds back enough through his Flow-link to make him grunt. “You sack of yellow shit-sure, you get to go clean. What about Tizarre ?”

“Fucker.” Bloody froth trails black from his mouth in the moonlight, and he finally meets my eye, and I have never seen such naked loathing on a human face. “This was mine, you fucker. It was mine. My shot. All these years. . working-waiting. . you fucker.”

What the hell’s he talking about? “Come on, Rababal-this is your last chance to not be a pissy bitch-”

“It was mine!” His shriek sprays black froth into the sand between us. “My idea. My plan. Mine, you fucker! And then you . . you. . now it’s all about you. .”

His voice breaks down into harsh hollow gasps, and-

Is he crying?

“Who are you anyway? Huh? Who the fuck are you? You’re fucking nobody! What gives you the right to. . the right. .”

The alley mouth behind me begins to whisper with the clicking of toeclaws on stone. Lots of them. Not too far away and getting closer.

He’s sobbing openly now. The buckeye lies forgotten on his limp, nerveless palm. “What gives you the right. . ?”

“Right’s got nothing to do with it. Maybe you haven’t noticed.”

His sobs hiccup to a sudden stop. He blinks once. And again.

He says quietly, “East.”

He leans to one side and gathers the last two canteens into the curve of his working arm. “Away from the central ramps.”

“All right.” The clicking’s getting louder. “Rababal-”

“You should go.”

“Yeah.”

“Caine.”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t forgive you.”

I look back. His stare is colder than the moon.

“Do you hear me? You are not forgiven.”

I give him a nod. “I hear you.”

It seems to mean something to him.

“Go.”

I find handholds on the wall and search for the first foothold with the toe of my boot and find it and up I go. I make the top of the wall a second or two before the alley fills with Black Knives. They move cautiously toward the curve of force that seals the cul-de-sac. From beyond the curve, one tiny motion: Rababal’s fist closing around that buckeye-

And I decide to get the hell out.

Around the black-gapped wells of collapsed rooftops, the walls are thick enough to run on. Black Knives shout behind me and arrows hiss into the night, but they can’t pursue without climbing the wall or breaking the Shield, and I’m already fifty yards away when the night roars flame behind me.

I don’t look back. At least I didn’t have to kill him myself.

I keep running.

East.

››scanning fwd››

The ground he’s carrying me over-what I can see of it past his huge gorilla ass-is still the city’s sand-dusted stone, bleached by moonlight. Must have been unconscious no more than a minute or two.

He swings along at a leisurely walk. Sure. Why hurry?

Twisting enough to get a look behind us scrapes the throw net across my face. The rough prickly hemp is wet with blood. Probably mine. Head wound, I bet. Which explains why I can’t remember how he caught me.

No way to tell how bad I’m hurt. The strings of puke on the hemp are probably mine too. This fucker’s shoulder is broad as a saddle, but playing sack-of-potatoes over it isn’t doing my guts any favors.

But it was worth taking the look; we seem to be Ass-End Charlie in this little parade.

All right. All right because he’s no expert at the frisk. There’s one he missed.

Pressure of the steel: hard against the curve of my spine between my shoulder blades-

All right. I can do this.

Slowly. Slowly. I rotate my wrists, turning my hands within the-ropes? strips of leather? — that bind them behind my kidneys.

Slowly. If he tumbles I’m awake, I’m fucked.

Uh: more fucked.