Caine Black Knife

identity?”

I nodded. “It’s supposed to make people unable to connect separate facts about me. That’s why I figured to use real names. But I’m not sure it’s working very fucking well.” I waved a hand at her. “You’re evidence of that.”

“As you should have expected; thaumaturgic magick is uncertain through out the Battleground, the more so in closer proximity to Hell. However-” She checked her papers again. “As I recall. . yes, here it is. The Eternal Forgetting is vulnerable to those whose core image of the subject transcends operant identity.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“It’s not important. Let’s continue. Why did you abandon the Jonathan Fist identity?”

I’m not going to belt her, I told myself. I’m not. “What are you, writing a fucking book?”

“Why, yes.” She gave me a smile so warmly smug I almost changed my mind. “Yes, I am.”

I dropped my face into my hands instead. “Oh, sweet shivering fuck. I hate you. Do you have any idea how much I hate you?”

I heard her chuckle. “Stop. You’ll hurt my feelings.”

“There’s already a goddamn book on me-”

“I’ve read it. But it’s not really about you; to my reading, it’s more about the damage you inflict on the lives of those around you. My book is to be far more than his; no mere history, no simple-minded biography, but instead the definitive treatise on your phenomenon, rather than your life: you as more than merely you.”

“Oh, god.”

“The essence of what makes you you: the quintessential spirit of the Caine in us all. Which is, after all, my sole interest. Cainism will never be a pure philosophy, a truly useful and universal moral compass, until that essence can be carved free of your unfortunately messy reality.”

“It’d be a better moral compass if you fuckers had named it after somebody else.”

She didn’t seem to hear. “Why do you think I requested Purthin’s Ford? This was the site, after all, of your functional apotheosis. This was where you-”

“How much have you got on this book?”

“Well-I’m still compiling my notes-”

“So I don’t have to kill you tonight.”

“Oh, please. You don’t kill-nor harm, nor even hurt-merely to protect your vanity. You never have.”

“I’m trying to outgrow that. What the hell is a ‘functional apotheosis’?-ah, forget I asked. I don’t want to know.” I jerked myself upright and tracked wet footprints across the kitchen floor. I picked up one of the lamps and weighed it in my hand.

When I drifted behind her toward the inner door, her cane thumped horizontally into the wall across my path. A subtle spin of her forefinger-and the wick wheel of the lamp in my hand turned exactly the same amount. Down. The lamp went out.

“My mistake,” she said. “I should never have mentioned the documents in my front room-though you see I can anticipate, and easily thwart, your attempt to dominate our conversation by threatening my work.”

I sighed down at the curl of smoke rising up the lamp’s glass chimney. “I ought to just crack your goddamn skull with it.”

“And how, exactly, will that persuade me to use Monastic resources to help you rescue Orbek?”

I stared at her.

“That is why you’re here tonight. Don’t trouble to deny it.”

“I’m talking to you,” I said heavily, “because the Council of Brothers needs to know what’s going on in this fucking town.”

“Horseshit.”

“What?”

“Horse,” she repeated precisely. “Shit. I repeat: I am the world’s leading authority on you. I know Orbek-know him well, as you’ll recall. I know you. And I know that there is nothing you will not say or do to save the life of someone you care about. It’s a matter of principle, isn’t it?”

“Which is why the Council needs to hear this from you. Because nobody believes a sonofabitching word I say anymore.”

“And why will I believe you?”

“Because,” I said, “you’re the world’s leading authority on me.”

She frowned. I could see gears clicking behind her face.

I had her. I just needed to set the hook.

“So I’m a liar,” I said. “You’re the expert: Talk to me about my lies.”

“Ah. .” She sat up, her eyes brightening. “Ah, yes. . the lies you fed the King of Cant to trigger the riots that led to the Second Ankhanan Succession War-that you would show Ma’elKoth to be an Aktir before the entire city. .”

“Yeah.”

“The lies you told us in the Pit, to build the morale of the condemned before Assumption Day. . even as you were being taken to your death in the Shaft, still you lied. . and yet. . and yet-”

“Yeah. And yet.”

“And Ambassador Raithe-his account of your accord with the Ascended Ma’elKoth is in the Embassy Archives in Ankhana-when you agreed, falsely agreed to surrender. .”

“Yeah.”

“And in every case,” she murmured, her eyes alight with distant awe, “your lies became truth. .”

“It makes me a little careful about what I say to people, you know what I mean?”

“Caine, I-” Her brittle voice had gone breathless. She sounded very, very young, and I caught a glimpse of the girl she must have been forty years ago, before the world had crushed the best of her dreams. “Caine. .”

It sounded like a prayer.

I had to turn away. “Look, don’t get on your knees or anything. Just keep your goddamn magick ink thing going so you can read this back when you make your report. You know how I got jobbed here in the first place?”

Her brows contracted. “You approached the Abbot of-I could look up the exact details in only a moment-ah, Tremaine Vale, yes, with intelligence on a semi-private expedition out of Prethrainnaig. Partially funded by the Kannithan Legion. In search of some primal Relic-something to do with Panchasell Mithondionne-”

“It was this big-ass gem called the Tear of Panchasell. According to the Lay of the Twilight King, it was formed of Panchasell’s weeping for the Folk trapped behind in the Quiet Land when he sealed the dil T’llan against the Blind God.”

“The oral histories of the First Folk are notoriously-”

“Yeah, I know. Call it a metaphor.”

“Yes. A pity we cannot examine the Tear itself.” She coughed delicately. “I do recall, now, reading your report. .”

I waved that off. “You know what the dil T’llan is?”

She shrugged. “Primal is a tricky tongue; nearly every word has a variety of related meanings, depending on context. Dil can mean path, or maze, or gate, or wall. T’llan is the Primal for the moon. It’s also a proper name for the moon, which they consider a person. It’s also the name of their goddess who takes the moon as Her Aspect. It’s also a descriptive modifier for anything that undergoes regular phase changes, or that is seen mostly but not always at night, or is related to tidal effects, or-”

“Yeah, yeah. In simple terms: the dillin are gateways to the Quiet Land. What the Primals call the Quiet Land is what you call Arta.”

Her eyes widened. “Your world. The Aktiri world. Yes: as I said, I’ve read Deliann’s book.”

“In my home language it’s called Earth. The Khryllians call it the True Hell, and that’s as good a name for it as any. You might remember the last time my people decided to show up in force. We call it Assumption Day.”

She lifted her cane and grimaced. “I was there.”