Caine Black Knife

not.”

Tyrkilld made another expansive whirl of the flagon. “There is not a blessed thing wrong with the service of Khryl, my lad. Saving only the company.”

“Yeah.” The iced beer in my hand got real interesting all of a sudden. “I talked with the lady in question. Thanks for delivering my message.”

He assayed what he undoubtedly thought was a subtle glance around the empty dining hall. “And no harm it did me. Thus far, as it were.”

I nodded. “We were going to talk about how I spotted you.”

He held up one of those hands that I was still too overly familiar with. “Nay, that I have determined. ’Twas my amateurish questioning, was it not? That I started with Freedom’s Face, and my foolish reference to elven magicks foiling Khryllian truthsense, and moving on too easily once I found you might have knowledge enough to do damage. .”

“So you’re not quite an idiot.”

“In my own defense, Master Monassbite, let me aver that your estimable self was to be loaded in pieces back onto the afternoon steamboat and sent south to heal over the course of some months. Or years. In which case my minor slips would have signified not at all.”

I nodded into my beer. “Shit just never quite goes the way we plan, though, huh?”

“Never quite, my lad. Never quite.”

“You and I need to talk about what Our Mutual Slag is really up to, here. And what we’re gonna do about it.”

“Do we now?” He unleashed another window-rattling belch. “That is to say: now? You’d be hard put to argue this as the best time for such news.”

“There’s never a good time.” I pushed my chair back from the sagging table and leaned on my knees. I picked at the ridges of callus across my knuckles. “Shit never happens when you’re ready for it. When you’re healthy and full of beans and spoiling to take on the world, the world leaves you the fuck alone. It always waits till you’ve got the flu and your dog’s sick and the mortgage is late and y’know, whatever. That’s when it gets you up the ass.”

Tyrkilld nodded, his sloppy grin fading to half a faint smile. “You speak with the air of a man having some small experience of planetary buggery.”

I tried for a smile and missed. “Funny thing is, before all this started, I was pretty goddamn close to happy. Happier than I think I’ve ever been. I was free. Really free, for I think the first time ever. I had the whole world open in front of me. I was happy. And now I’ve jumped into this shitpool with both feet.”

“Happy men,” Tyrkilld said, leaning forward to lay a brick of a hand on my arm, “are only half alive.”

I decided not to tell him my life could be read as a chain of evidence establishing exactly that. “I figure you’re a decent guy, Tyrkilld. As low-rent cock-sucking thugs go, y’know.”

“Gracious as ever.”

“I figure you wouldn’t really be in this if you had the faintest fucking clue what was really going on. Freeing enslaved ogrilloi doesn’t have shit to do with it. Freeing ogrilloi is only a means to an end.”

Tyrkilld swayed a bit. “And-? You’ll have to help me, lad; I’m no master of the mental arts even when sober.”

“Freedom’s Face is a cover for an Ankhanan insurgency. Because even now, nobody wants to fight the Knights of Khryl straight up. Not even the Empire.”

The Knight’s eyes went round. “Fight us? Ankhana?”

“If they have to.”

“For what? What do we have that they could possibly want?”

“This.” I waved a hand. “Everything. All of it.”

“The Battleground?” He looked dazed. “The vast Ankhanan Empire covets our poor scrap of a corner of the Boedecken Waste-? What for? Hasn’t your bloody elven sorceror of an Emperor land enough already?”

“It’s not about the land. It’s about what’s here. It’s about your Artan guests and BlackStone Mining. It’s-complicated.”

“Are we so short of time?”

“Maybe. And I’m not sure I could make you understand why they want it anyway. And you’re sure as hell short of brains right now. No offense.”

“None taken; freely admitted, my lad. Freely admitted. And how do you come by this sudden trove of intelligence that Khryl Himself avowed you lacked only this morning?”

“People tell me things. When I ask them nicely. You should give it a fucking try someday.”

Tyrkilld’s wariness evaporated into a sudden chuckle. “Red Horn! A flagon! And one for the freeman!” He pounded the table with the flat of his hand. It cracked, and sagged in the middle.

He blinked at it, then shrugged. “And so pray, Master Monassbite, if it would please your Imperial Lordliness to impart to a poor humble hedge Knight one last pittance of your Shining Verity. . why bring’st you this news to my insufficiently sober self? I can barely hope to remember it, much less take action. .”

“Nobody told you to get pisseyed.”

He leaned back again and favored me with a long, slow, alchoholically deliberate scrutiny. “If what you’ve told me is true, you understand that what you’ve just done is. . well, for want of a kinder word, one can only call it treason.”

I shrugged. “I’ve done worse.”

Tyrkilld blinked, blinked again, and then unleashed a roar of laughter. “I’ll drink to that!” He peered around. “Or I would. . Red Horn! Where’s my swill?”

He slapped the cracked table. It split with a groan and collapsed. The kitchen doors banged open again and Kravmik lumbered in, another bucket-size flagon in one hand and a civilized cup in the other. “And here we go-grk. For love of-Tyrkilld, you break another my table!”

“Bring on the swill,” said the Knight with a lordly wave. “Put the table on my account.”

“Bet I will,” the ogrillo grumbled as he set the flagon and the cup on the edge of the nearest undamaged table. “Be more careful, you, hey?”

“So you two know each other, huh?”

Ogrillo and Knight looked at each other before looking at me with expressions of mildly inquisitive innocence.

“No taking a knee. Not even a ‘the Knight thisandthat.’ Not to mention your own private barrel of whateverthefuck this is.”

Tyrkilld yawned and smacked his lips. “I’m not in Khryl’s Battledress, and thus informality is no insult. As for the barrel-”

“’S just grillswill,” Kravmik said. He hung his head a little. “The Knight Aeddhar’s gotten a taste for it, that’s all. So I keep a barrel topped up for him. And in exchange, he makes sure the parish armsmen don’t bust up my pot still.”

“Pot still?” I sat up straighter. “Pot still as in distill?”

“And a nasty vile fluid it dispenses, too,” Tyrkilld sighed, reaching for the flagon. “He boils the alchohol off his beer, capturing the spirit in a long coiled tube of-”

“Wait. Stop. Both of you. Hot staggering fuck.” I lurched to my feet. “Grill-swill is distilled beer?”

“Not so loud,” Kravmik muttered. “I know we’re alone here, but it’s not completely legal, you understand?”

“Or even at all,” Tyrkilld said, taking a long draught. “And for good reason too.”

“Give me that.” I snatched the cup off the table. Inside was a very pale, almost colorless liquid. . with that dark, burnt-chocolate scent. . but also some heather, and honey, and exotic spice. .

That was the smell. The taste that had brought tears to my eyes.

I remembered now: Orbek recounting the boogeyman stories his father used to tell him. About marsh ghouls in the Boedecken, who’d lure you out into the bogs and suck out your eyeballs and pull you down. . into the