Caine Black Knife

somebody owes you a favor.”

“This is plenty official. Your better half’d think so, anyway.” I made one last check, seating knives and gun securely in their places, shifting and twisting to make sure the tunic draped without binding.

“He would?”

“Yeah. I’m on a mission from God.”

“Oh, sure. Very funny.”

“Not to me.”

“You-” The bishop blinked, and blinked again. “You’re serious? You’re working for-” He rolled his eyes significantly. “What does He want you to do?”

“If you find out, be sure you let me know.”

Tourann cocked his head. “I don’t get it.”

“He doesn’t tell people what to do. He might as well take on an Aspect and do it Himself, which starts the kinds of problems the Covenant of Pirichanthe was designed to prevent. And He sure as screaming fuck wouldn’t tell me anyway.”

“No?”

“We have history. Some of which your better half would call gospel.” I scratched at the lattice of scar and callus that padded my knuckles. “So I make my own plans, and if He doesn’t like them, He should stay the fuck out of my head.”

“Uh.”

I flexed my hands to flush the scars white and then red again. Here I was, being an asshole. Again. As usual. It wasn’t Tourann’s fault that the god he served had murdered my wife, and my father, mind-raped my daughter, and made my best friend into His immortal zombie meatpuppet. Gods are like that.

And what the hell: He’s my god too.

I sighed. “He told me once I have a gift for breaking things in useful ways. So sometimes He pushes me toward things He thinks need breaking.”

“What needs breaking here?”

“Shit, what doesn’t?” I waved us toward a new subject. “What do you have on the Artans?”

“Please, my lor-er, Caine-”

“Shade.”

“We really don’t need any of your kind of-are you certain that Our Beloved Father has sent you here-?”

“I’ll find out soon enough anyway.”

Tourann sighed. “Does the name Simon Faller strike any sparks?”

A shake of my head. “Sounds Artan, though.”

“Transdeian papers. Rolled into town about ten months after the Assumption. Rolled literally: on his own private train.”

“You have rail?”

“We do now. Faller came complete with two hundred stonebenders and a pair of rockmagi laying track ahead of him.”

“Money.”

“Plenty. He bought BlackStone Mining, and he could afford to operate at a loss for almost two years.”

“Knights soft on him?”

“They’d bear his children. Faller’s connected in Transdeia. Where do you think the Khryllians get those fancy guns?”

I frowned. “Diamondwell?”

“Show a stonebender a machine and he’ll come back the next day with one that works twice as well and is ten times as pretty.”

“They don’t do autoloaders? All I saw was pump-lever stuff.”

“They’re Khryllians. They’re not interested in a gun unless it can double as a mace in hand-to-hand. Anyway, Faller made the deal for them. He’s a sharp operator.”

“All he’s got going is this mining company?”

“BlackStone’s not just mining. Some precious metals, but primarily it’s a griffinstone producer. These past few months they’ve moved serious weight. Low-end stuff-mostly bled out-but a lot of it, and he seems to be making money now. Uses grills for the labor, but his managers and overseers are human. Probably Artan. Forty-two, all told.”

“Forty-two? Holy crap. What’re they really after?”

Tourann shrugged. “Besides money and power? You tell me.”

I rubbed my eyes. The headache was coming back. “Let me give it to you in small words. This whole bloody continent-shit, probably the world-is lousy with Aktiri and Overworld Company goons stranded here on Assumption Day. Most of them are kind of like me: we don’t play well with others. Now you’re telling me there’s more than forty of them, all together in one place at one time. Something fucking serious is going on here, and I don’t feel like getting my ass shot off while I’m trying to figure out what.”

“Well-” Tourann shifted his weight uncomfortably. “-this is strictly conjectural, based on an. . unreliable resource we have inside Freedom’s Face. This resource is, well, Folk-you know how they are; might be true, and it might just be a funny story-”

“Yeah, spare me. Give.”

“There’s supposed to be a dil to the Quiet Land here in the Battleground. In Hell, actually-somewhere back inside the bluff. The story is that Black-Stone’s looking for it.”

My eyes drifted closed. One hand came up, fell again, reached for the edge of the desk, and missed. I lurched drunkenly.

“Caine? Caine, are you unwell?”

By the time I opened my eyes again, Tourann was half out of his chair. I waved him back into it. “I’m all right. I’m all right, I just-wow. Just-this has been a kinda rough day. Shit, I gotta sit down.”

I took a faltering step and half fell into the horseshoe chair in front of the fire.

“Caine-seriously, I don’t wield the full range of Ule-Tourann’s powers, but if you’re sick, Our Beloved Father does grant me-”

“Nothing that’ll help.”

I shoved myself forward and from somewhere found the strength to hold my head up and look the bishop in the eye. “That story’s not a story, that’s all. You need to get on your Artan Mirror tonight. Now. You need to tell Ankhana. There really is a dil, and BlackStone’s not just looking for it. They’ve found it.”

“Really? Well, that’s certainly interesting, if true, but it’s hardly urgent, is it? It’s not like they’ll ever be able to open it, after all.”

“They have. More than once.”

“Impossible. Even the power of Our Beloved Father-”

“You need to get a message to the Duke right now. The Emperor needs to know the dil T’llan has been breached again, probably from our side.”

“But it’s not possible-”

“Fuck not possible.”

“Please-you must understand-communications of this type are out of policy, and without a very good reason. . I mean, you didn’t even know about the dil until I brought it up-”

The headache chiseled gouges along the inside of my temple. My hand went to my eyes again. “Know about it?”

— darkness stinking of shit and fear and human breath, naked and hot and cold and slime-wet until shivers ripple like shockwaves from flesh to clinging flesh, rune-carved rose quartz shimmering in the blue nonlight of the blade-wand-

My hand came away from my eyes and my mind leaped twenty-five years in a single bound. “Know about it?”