Caine Black Knife

But I just stared at the floor.

“You apologize.”

“Yeah.” What do you want, flowers and a fucking box of candy? my young ghost snarled, but I fixed my gaze resolutely below the Knight’s chin and bit down till my jaw ached.

The Knight took a long, slow breath.

Then another.

“Accepted.”

“May I go now? Sir?”

The Knight lifted another finger, and another page scampered up. “Take the freeman’s trunk to the lucannixheril.”

“Hey-”

“Freeman Shade.” The Knight turned an open hand toward a nearby door of iron. It stood open. Down the hall beyond were more iron doors. They were closed. Each iron door had a head-high judas gate. “Wait in there. The page will direct you.”

“My papers-”

“You will not need them.”

“I said I was sorry-”

“And your apology was accepted. Wait in there.”

“Am I under arrest?”

The Knight inclined his very young, very blond head. “If you like.”

“For what?”

“Because it is my prerogative to declare you so, freeman.” His face could have been one of the walls. “As an Armed Combatant grade six, it is your right under the Laws of Engagement to Challenge my authority.” He nodded fractionally toward a sunlit opening on the far wall of the customs barn without shifting his expressionless gaze. “Should you wish to make such a Challenge, a sanctified Arena awaits through yonder archway.”

“Are you f-? Uh. You’re not.”

“The matter can also be settled here. You need only strike.”

“Strike.” I squinted at the Knight. The rules had changed since the last time I was in the Boedecken. Maybe because of the last time I was in the Boedecken.

The young Knight offered a bland smile that never rose past the temperate zone south of his arctic eyes. “If I have overstepped, Khryl will favor your cause; Our Lord of Valor is also lord of justice.”

“It’s a swell theory.” I lifted a hand to my face; a headache had begun to chew the backs of my eyes. “Have that page go easy on my trunk, will you? It’s new.”

The cell was immaculate.

Two doors, both of iron, scoured and freshly oiled; a wide barred window that let in the noonday quiet and a hint of autumn air; walls of whitewashed brick that smelled of clean chalk; comfortable cushions on the built-out brick benches along the walls; a gleaming brass chamberpot in one corner, and in the other, a small table with a pair of fired-clay beakers, an earthenware jug of cool water, a dish of dried fruit, shelled nuts, and a small plate with three different kinds of hard cheese.

Just about the nicest place I’d ever been locked up.

I’d said good-bye to Orbek. . what was it, four months ago? Had to be. It had been late spring when we made it back to Thorncleft after we settled the thing on the Korish border. Orbek got on the Ankhana train at the Railhead, going home to visit his old friends in the Warrens, he’d said.

To look up some family.

Now with the leaves turning to gold and red we were both on the Battleground, and somehow Orbek had made enough trouble that just mentioning his name bought a quiet afternoon in jail.

I didn’t waste time in worry, or energy in pacing. They’d let me out, or they wouldn’t.

After a while, I ate.

The sun fell fully on the outer wall of the cell. The brick got pleasantly warm. I stretched out on those comfortable cushions, laced fingers behind my head, and let the headache sew my eyes shut. And for a time I was twenty-five again, young and stupid and vicious, playing Beau Geste with the Black Knives in the vertical city. .

Despite what you’ve heard, I’m not stupid. I knew already what had been eating me up: that twenty-five- year-old kid. I don’t like remembering him. I don’t like sharing my life with him. I don’t like being reminded I haven’t changed all that much.

What’s really creepy is that I don’t like being reminded how much I have changed.

Because, y’know, those black screaming nightmares of blood and terror-

Those aren’t nightmares. Not for me. When the scrape of iron on iron wiped away blood and screams and sucked night back inside my head, I was sorry to wake up.

That’s the permanent carnival of me.

I rolled onto my side. Slanting sunlight through the barred window loaded my shoulders with an extra quarter century.

The outer door swung open. The first armsman through went left, the next went right, and the third came up the middle: pro style. Each of them had one of those fancy riot guns at slant arms to go along with the morningstars that swung from their belts. Each of them had a forefinger resting lightly on the guard alongside the trigger. Each of them had creases on windburned faces and the lizard eyes of veteran killers.

They wore full-length byrnies and studded steel caps that the afternoon heat must have made resemble walking around with their heads in frying pans. The one in the middle stopped in front of the bench and let the riot gun’s business end sag. The muzzle didn’t quite cover me. Not quite. “On your feet.”

This day was slipping from crummy toward downright fucking grim. “I just woke up.”

The armsman stepped back and racked the slide on his riot gun. The muzzle shifted, and the finger slipped through the guard, and I felt a decidedly cold twinge in my testicles. Which was where the muzzle now pointed. “On your feet, friar.”

“Or what? You’ll shoot my nuts off?”

“Or you will insult my office.” A new voice, from outside the still-open door: mellow and friendly, traces of a Jheledi lilt making it as deceptively light as the top notes of a pipe organ. “Freeman Shade. Please rise.”

A reluctant sigh swung my legs over the edge of the bench. I was too old for this big-dick horseshit anyway. Still, I couldn’t help deadpanning the armsman when I stood up. “A boy likes to be asked, dumbass.”

Must be something in the Boedecken air. Or something.

Through the door ambled an exceedingly ordinary-looking Knight, below average height-a full hand shorter than me, and I’m not a tall man-well into middle age, thinning hair above a round, kindly face. The Sunburst of Khryl on his cuirass looked shrunken compared with the volume of the chest it didn’t manage to cover. A cloak thrown back over his pauldrons was shimmering white only as far as his waist; below, it was splashed the same muddy reddish brown as his greaves and sabatons. A greathelm he carried in one hand was casually passed in the direction of the nearest armsman as he came in. The armsman blanched as he desperately shifted his grip on his riot gun and nearly dropped them both. The Knight didn’t appear to notice.

His eyes were warm and brown, and sparkled with some secret amusement as he flicked a finger at the other armsman and waited for him to close the outer door.

The cell felt a good deal smaller.

“Freeman Shade,” he said, “I am Tyrkilld, Knight Aeddharr. I would be the Knight Householder for the Riverdock Parish.”

“Would you? It’s damned swell of you to come personally to welcome me to town. I’m sure you’re a busy man.”

“Oh, that I am indeed.” The Knight chuckled. He blinked as though surprised to find himself standing there. “And to deliver a welcome is exactly why I have come.”

“In your Khrylsday-go-to-Tourney armor too.”

“Well, that’s but to impress the worthy.” He crossed his wrists and unfixed the jointed fasteners that clipped his gauntlets to his vambraces. “No one expects to find your name numbered upon that