Caine Black Knife

bogs.

The bogs that were full of-

“Peat.” Wonder kindled within me like summer dawn. “It’s sonofabitching peat.”

Kravmik frowned at me. “It’s bogearth. We cut it for the cook fires-wood’s too expensive to burn here, coal ruins the food, and turds. . well, humans get funny about turd smoke.”

“You’re making beer out of malted barley. That you’re drying over peat fires,” I murmured reverently. “Bogearth, whatever. And you’re distilling the beer to make, uh, grillswill.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Oh, my sweet and generous gods.” I took a sip. It was liquid fire. Too young. Too harsh. Unfiltered. Yeast and fermentation esters.

It was fucking magnificent.

I said, “Kravmik Red Horn: Lazzevget, will you marry me?”

“Come again?”

“How much for my own barrel? Shit, how much for all the barrels? How much grillswill can you make without getting arrested?”

Kravmik nodded at Tyrkilld. “Ask him.”

Tyrkilld shrugged up at me.

“You can stomach this disgusting brew?”

“Oh, Tyrkilld-” I took another sip. It lit up my brain. “Oh, it’s pretty hairy, I’ll give you that-”

“’S just grillswill,” Kravmik muttered. “What d’you expect?”

“But that’s because you’re holding it in beer barrels for, what, a few days? Weeks? Listen, I can ship barrels of Tinnaran oak up here-new oak, and some already used to age their brandy-if you barrel it for years, instead of days-three years in the new oak, macerate some tannin into it, then finish it in the-”

“He’s gone entirely mad,” Tyrkilld said in wonder. “Kravmik, take his cup. Two sips and the poor lad’s mind is gone.”

“Reach for this cup and I’ll break your fucking arm.”

I took another sip, a long one, and held it in my mouth until my tongue burned. Must have been a hundred forty proof or better. Amazing he could distill it without blowing the roof off the building.

But after a moment I remembered where I was. And why.

I swallowed the swill and set down the cup.

“Son of a bitch.” Sweat had prickled out across my forehead. I swiped my sleeve upward over my face. “Talk about shit happening at the wrong time. .”

Tyrkilld and Kravmik were still staring at me. I shrugged at the huge ogrillo. “Thanks, Kravmik. I mean it. And thanks for sharing your barrel, Tyrkilld. You’ll never know how much it meant to me. But I have to go to bed now. Tomorrow’s gonna be a busy day.”

Kravmik shook his head and turned away. “Ankhanans,” he muttered, lumbering back toward the kitchen. “Can never tell with those people. .”

Without a table to lean on, Tyrkilld had some difficulty regaining his feet. Once upright, he frowned down into his flagon. “And amongst all this still rests concealed, Master Monassbite,” he murmured, “the truth of why you have brought your tale to me.”

I cycled a dozen different lies; a couple almost made it into my mouth.

But-

“You’re the only one to bring this to, Tyrkilld. I’m putting this on you for the same reason that Kierendal decided she wanted you dead: because you’re the one who knows shit-you’ve been on the inside. You’re the one who can hurt her, when she starts to make her real moves, and. . ah, fuck it anyway.” I reached for the cup again. “It’s because I don’t like you.”

“You’ll have to favor the ignorance of a poor parish Knight; I’ve averred already that I’m no great mind, even sober. Which it might serve you well to remember I am currently not.”

A one-shoulder shrug brought the cup to my lips; swillfire lit up the inside of my skull. “I figured you’d only half believe me. So instead of, say, going to Angvasse and mounting a full-scale sweep-which you can’t really do anyway, without telling her more than you can afford for her to know about your, y’know, compromised position- you’d go and snoop around a little, pick up some Faces, and pound ’em to check out my story.”

Tyrkilld nodded somewhat more vigorously than entirely necessary. “As would any prudent Knight who’d had experience of your dishonest self.”

“Sure. The punch line, though, is that I’m telling the truth.” I took another shot of the swill. “And Kierendal is no one to be fucked with. Which is also the truth. About the time that you found out it was all true, you’d be in the middle of being violently dead.”

“Ah.”

“Which would set off a full-scale round-up of Freedom’s Face-which is what I want-and would leave you in bloody chunks that even Khryl couldn’t put back together. Which was also what I wanted.”

Tyrkilld rocked onto the balls of his feet and stuck his chin out as though that might help him keep his balance. “And yet now you have revealed this nefarious plan entire.”

A swirl of the cup set the grillswill in motion enough to sharpen the air with the sizzle of raw alcohol.

“Maybe I’m just not the hard-ass I used to be,” I said. “It’s one thing to figure out how to get a guy killed. It’s another to do it cold while you look him in the face.”

I raised the cup.

“And it’s something entirely else to do it to a man who’s just bought you-when you thought you’d never see another for the rest of your pathetic suffering life-a big damn mug of scotch.”

Already on the edge of the bed, tunic hanging on the post, baton unstrapped and pistol unholstered, I was pulling off one of my boots when I sagged and let my foot fall back to the floor. “Goddammit.”

I flopped backward onto the bed and threw my arm over my eyes. It didn’t help.

Pretty soon I moved my arm. Stars stared at me through the skylight. A winding crack in the plaster spread crooked winter stain from the casement toward the door.

Somehow it looked like the Caineway.

“Son of a bitch.” I heaved myself upright and put my tunic back on.

Downstairs, the dining hall was a shipwreck of post-party debris. A couple of listless eligibles drifted among the wreckage, righting tables and performing triage on the chairs and benches. Young Mistress Pratt had her hair bound up now, and a sheen of sweat to match the pretty flush on her cheeks as she shouldered a massive tray piled high with tankards and half-empty platters toward the kitchen doors, while a sullen teenage human boy swept spillage toward the alley door.

Pratt was piling more trays with tankards and platters, but he stopped willingly enough when my wave from the doorway caught his eye.

“Freeman Shade?” He wiped his hands on his apron as he came over. “Is there a problem? What’d you say to Knight Aeddhar? He came back and walked through the crowd, and the party just melted away. . not that I’m complaining-flat-rate event, y’know; the less they drink, the better we do-but from the look on his face-”

“Out here, Pratt, huh?”

“Oh, sure, sure, freeman.” He chuckled tiredly as he slipped through the half door. “No harm in letting Yttrall do some of the work-not that she doesn’t pull her weight. D’you know how much it’s worth to this establishment just to let her sit on Knight Aeddhar’s knee and laugh at his jokes? Which is a job in and of-”

“Pratt.”

The hosteler met my eyes and seemed to see me for the first time. Sudden wariness pinched the fatigue- lines deeper down his thin cheeks. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” His voice had gone quiet. “Really wrong.”

“Pratt, you need to get your family out of town.”

The hosteler’s feathery, almost invisible brows drew together. “What?”

“I mean it.”

“I don’t understand.”