Battleground, you are fully subject to the Laws of Engagement.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
“Be sure to examine the Laws in your visitor’s guide. Monastic training beyond grade four designates you an Armed Combatant at all times. Unarmed Exemption never applies.”
“Grade four?”
“Combat grades are detailed in your copy of the Laws. Grades beyond four involve the use of magick. Or, in your case, Esoteric Control Disciplines.”
“You seem to know more than most about Monastics.”
“I am a Soldier of Khryl. We know more than most about fighting.”
“Huh. Fair enough.” I leaned a little closer and lowered my voice. “You get a lot of trouble with that stuff?” I nodded toward the poster. “Firearms and explosives?”
“More every day. Ever see what a gun can do to a man?”
“Once or twice.”
The inspector shrugged down at the paper on his clipboard. “Bombs are worse.”
“I’d rather get blown up than a couple other things I could name.”
“Yes.” The inspector squinted up. “Know anything about the Smoke Hunt?”
The back of my neck tingled.
“May Khryl grant you keep it that way. Pass along.”
I shuffled forward. This trip was turning interesting already. Not in a good way. But I hadn’t expected good.
The stamp clerk at the head of the line didn’t bother to look up. “Name and nation.”
“Dominic Shade.” I fished documents out of a worn leather purse that hung from my belt. “Freeman of Ankhana.”
The clerk took the documents from his hand and opened them, but instead of reading them he glanced to one side, where a mountain of blond human in glittering plate armor stood at parade rest, visored greathelm under his left arm. The mountain scowled faintly, staring.
I gave the mountain back the ghost of a smile. I learned twenty-five years ago that I can’t be read by the truthsense of even the most powerful Khryllian Lord. And nobody better than Knight Attendant-barely out of novitiate-gets stuck with shit duty like checkpoint verification.
Not that it mattered; I was telling the truth. I mostly do.
Dominic’s the name I’d gone by when I first came to Home, playing a promising novice at the Abbey of Garthan Hold. In the depths of the gambling hells of Kirisch-Nar, where men fight beasts barehanded in the star- shaped arenas called catpits, I am still remembered as Shade. I was granted the freedom of the Ankhanan Empire some three years ago-not long after I murdered the Empire’s god.
But let that part go.
The Knight’s lips tightened. The clerk nodded absently. “Welcome to Purthin’s Ford, Freeman Shade. I see here you are Armed grade six-impressive for an Incommunicant. Monastic?”
“Retired.”
“Ah. Very well.” He made a note. “Current occupation?”
“Business traveler.”
“Really?” The clerk sniffed and looked up through his brows. “We don’t often see Armed Combatants making careers in sales. What’s your line?”
“Wholesale weights and measures.”
“Indeed.”
I tipped a bland wink toward the Knight Attendant. “Prepare, lest ye be weighed and found wanting, know what I mean?”
The Knight Attendant’s left eyebrow twitched. Fractionally.
“Yes.” The clerk sounded less impressed than the Knight looked. “Duration and purpose of your visit?”
“A few days. Maybe a week or two.”
“And you’re here on business?”
Maybe it was worth telling the truth here, too. “I’m here to see my brother.”
“His name?”
“Orbek.”
“Orbek Shade?”
“No.” I deadpanned the scowling Knight. “Black Knife. Orbek Black Knife. Sept Taykar.”
The Knight’s scowl evaporated into blank astonishment. The clerk dropped his pencil, fumbled for it. Charcoal crumbled in his fingers. “Oh, very funny.” He brushed at charcoal crumbs, smearing black across his table.
“If you say so.”
“What’s his
I nodded at the Knight. “Ask him.”
The clerk turned, mouth opening. The Knight’s astonishment had now given way to naked suspicion. “Our Lord hears no lie.”
The clerk pointed his gape back my way. “Your brother’s an
“Is that a problem?” I turned a palm upward. “Other than for my mother?”
“I, ah, I ah, I-don’t know. I suppose not, er-”
The Knight’s eyes narrowed over a mouth gone hard. “You claim this socalled Black Knife as brother?”
“How many times do you want me to say it?”
“There are no Black Knives in Purthin’s Ford.” The Knight turned away, lifting a finger clad in jointed steel. A liveried page scampered toward him, and the Knight spoke in tones too low to be heard through the general bustle.
Couldn’t read his lips, either. Call it a wash.
The page headed for the cityside door at a walk with an eager tilt of the torso that hinted it wanted to be a run.
Call it a wash with dirty water.
I pushed a sigh through my teeth. “So all right, let’s go, huh?”
The clerk looked blank. “I’m sorry?”
“Is there a law against family visits? Is there some goddamn tax to pay? Do I need a dispensation from the friggin’ Justiciar?”
“I, ah, well-no, I don’t-”
“Then stamp my fucking papers, huh? It stinks in here.”
“Freeman Shade.” That mountain of Khryllian steel and meat loomed at my shoulder. “Soldiers of Khryl are treated with courtesy. And deference.”
“Yeah?” I showed teeth to eyes as blue and empty as a winter sky while I channeled the ghost of me at twenty-five. “Hey, sorry.”
I turned back to the clerk. “
There came the metallic rustle that is the only sound well-tended armor makes when its wearer shifts his weight; it didn’t quite bury the strangled growl the Knight failed to lock inside his throat. “Soldiers of Khryl are
“No? Then I guess just now we all must’ve, what, nodded off and had the same dream?” I showed more teeth. “Does this mean we’re in love?”
Cunningly jointed gauntlets creaked with the clench of fists. “Freeman Shade, you are Armed as you stand, and your manner constitutes Lawful Challenge. Must I Answer?”
The second half of my life leaked back into me with a long, slow sigh of old-enough-to-know-better. I jammed the monster back in its vault, but I still had to lower my head before I could speak. Even at fifty, I can’t make myself back down while looking a man in the eye.
“No,” I said. “I apologize. To both of you.”
The Knight glowered into my peripheral vision, waiting for an explanation, an excuse, a
