Caine Black Knife

know?”

“I’m not sure. Tizarre and I. . we used to talk about it, late at night. Trying to guess. Kess, maybe. And I think Stalton. . was. I think. Probably.”

Wow.

A sawtooth knife scrapes inside my ribs: everyone who ever rents Stalton’s last cube will watch that hammer come down at their own eyes. Be able to feel it. If I weren’t going to die here, I could do it myself.

Wow.

“And you, of course,” she says. “Finding you working for Rababal is what made us realize we weren’t the only ones.”

“Why me of course?”

“Because we recognized you. From, uh, you know-from school.”

Holy crap. “For real?”

“Oh yes. We knew all about you. We came in the quarter before you graduated. We were-I guess you could call us fans. Your first fans.”

Huh. So far, my only.

“I don’t-” Why do I feel like I should apologize? “I don’t remember you.”

“A couple of first-quarter girls? Why should you? You were the campus stars-you and your friend. You know, the elf-?”

Yeah. Conditioning won’t allow us to speak his name, but we don’t have to. And, y’know, thinking about school gives me a weird warm feeling. Even the pain in my gut fades a little. Much as I hated the place, I like remembering it.

Talking there and then beats the shit out of living here and now.

“We always-we kind of thought you must be dead, or something.”

“Or something?”

I can feel her shrug in the shift of her breasts. “Everyone thought you’d be a big star. I mean, it’s been, what, six years? Seven? We thought we would have heard of you by now.”

“Yeah, well, my life hasn’t been going exactly to plan. Maybe you’ve noticed.”

Her sigh is silent, but I can feel it. “And-that friend of yours. He was so gifted. Best in the school. Whatever happened to him?”

I shrug against her thighs. “Nobody knows. Dead, probably. He never came back from-” Can’t say the word. “Never came back from, y’know, his, uh, training. You know.”

“Being the best. . it doesn’t really count for much, does it?”

“Not unless best means luckiest.” It comes out pretty well, but the cold twist above my wounded guts reminds me how much I still miss him. Not that it matters now. If you believe the religious types, I might see him soon enough.

“Tizarre. .” Her voice has gone to hush. A drop of moisture splashes on my chest.

“Tizarre had such a crush on him. .”

Another drop. I resist the urge to taste it.

“She used to write about him. Poetry. Sometimes to him. In her diary.”

“Yeah?” I have had as much as I can take of this maudlin crap. “She’d have been disappointed. He was queer.”

“He. . what? He was?”

“Most likely. We never talked about it. But I’m pretty sure. Only way she would have gotten anywhere with him is if she suddenly grew a dick.”

“Caine, you-” I can feel her shift in the darkness. Maybe shaking her head. “Why do you have to be such a. . an asshole all the time?”

Oh, for shit’s sake. Here we go. “I wonder that myself.”

“You’re so. . hostile. So angry. Are you always like this?”

“Sometimes I’m worse.”

“That’s what I mean. You say it like a joke, but it’s not. Not really. You always have something rotten to say about everything. Even yourself.”

“Hey, I’ve got an idea for a good time-why don’t I bleed to death on your lap while you outline my defects of character?”

“Hnh. And to think I–I thought-”

“What? You thought what?” It comes out harsh: a lot colder than I meant to sound. Because I really want to know.

Because she and Tizarre-Tizarre and her crush on my friend. . I mean, what about Marade? Did she ever have a crush of her own?

From balls to brain I ache with hope that she’s always had a thing for bad boys. .

Because my body doesn’t care where we are. My body doesn’t care how broken I am. How much I hurt. My body doesn’t care about anything except the smooth warmth of her skin. The soft full arc of breast against my arm. Because right now all I can think about is that one mind-bending kiss.

But all she has for me is a resigned sigh as she shifts her grip so that she can cradle me in her arms like a baby. “Are you ready now?”

Ahhh, shit. “Yeah. I guess I am.”

Without apparent effort, she lifts me off the floor and stands.

“Khryl’s Healing is a power of Love.” Her voice has recovered that Ivanhoe swing: she’s got her Knight on now. “It is His Love for those wounded in the service of Valor that knits flesh and bone. But because my flesh is Its channel, His Love can only follow my own.”

Really? My breath goes short, and not from pain. “Marade, I-”

“Shut up.” Her real voice, with a snap to it. A fresh sigh brings on her Knight again. “You must be silent, Caine. You must. To find love for you in my heart is. . difficult. At best. And when you speak-”

One more sigh, short and bitter. “When you speak, it is impossible.”

››scanning fwd››

Years pass in a thermite blaze.

Sticking her fingers into the holes on either side of my thigh was bad enough; when her whole hand goes into the wound in my gut, my control breaks.

It’s so wrong-her fingers wriggle and slide and I can feel them, I can feel every one of them and I reject, I deny, I refuse to feel but there is a savage intimacy to it, beyond extreme, a secret sharing profound and profoundly wrong that surges up my throat like vomit and I shudder and moan-

She’s reaching inside, pushing through the torn viscera, groping into the hole that fucker’s fighting claw ripped in whatever the hell the organ might be-liver, stomach, large intestine, I don’t know, it hurts so much I can’t remember which is what-and when her attention turns to Khryl’s Love, the white phosphorus it ignites inside me burns spastic jerks through my arms and legs and bangs my head on the floor.

Faint pearly iridescence like faerie fire crawls her skin again, and when the screams start to rip upward from my gut to the top of my head, she brings her shimmering arm to my lips.

“Bite down,” she says, distant. Clinical. “Go on.”

I take her salt-sweet skin into my mouth and latch onto her ulna and taste dust and sand and sweat and muffle my screams on her flesh as every twinge and pang and ache that would make a misery of the weeks of healing this wound would require is crammed into five shattering minutes that transcend agony.

When my knitting belly has finally pushed her hand back out, she lays it along my flank; the iridescence fades from her skin and we collapse together into the absolute darkness, gasping exhaustion in each other’s arms. “Y’know. .” I wheeze out the words. “No matter how. . well it works. .that shit is never gonna be popular.”

“Nor should it be.” Her voice is faint, but her breathing is already regularizing: she’s in a lot better condition than I am. “Khryl’s Healing is for heroes. His Love does not spare your pain, but requires that you embrace it. Even