Caine Black Knife

The night gives me a long, cold wait for the next flash of lightning. If she’s dead, I’m completely fucked. I can’t do this without her. Maybe I can still run. Maybe. Maybe if I hadn’t taken out so many pickets and gotten the fuckers thousand-amped about their perimeter, I would have had a shot.

God damn you worthless weak fucking whiny sack of shit whore, you better not be-

When the lightning finally comes, it shows my fondest hope: a flicker of white above the slop pit’s muck: one of Tizarre’s eyes, turned up toward the ragged rim of night sky.

“Who. . z’there?” Her voice is as dead as her hands. “How d’you know m’name?”

“Keep it down, for fuck’s sake,” I hiss at her. “It’s Caine. We need to-”

“Caine?” Blank and dull. Not even a spark. “How-?”

“Never mind that. We need to get you out of there.”

Silence.

“Tizarre?”

“I-don’t, Caine. I can’t. Don’t make me. Just let me die.”

Not fucking likely. “Don’t quit on me now, Tizarre. Not now. I need you.Marade needs you.”

A whisper from the darkness: “I can’t. . feel my legs, Caine. I can’t feel anything. They. . they cut me before they hung me in here. . Storm’s coming. I can end it. I can drown. .”

Huh. If she wanted to drown in other people’s shit, she could’ve just stayed home.

“I can help you. I found stuff, Tizarre-”

Fuck it anyway. “Stuff from home, Tizarre.”

Another flash of summer lightning.

Both her eyes are open now. “Home?”

“Yeah. I’ve been home. You get it?”

“Marade-before they took her, she said-she said you promised-if they took you home-”

“Yeah, I promised.”

I let the thunder roll past before I go on.

People who have moral qualms with bald fucking lies don’t become Eso-terics in the first place. What I am about to say won’t give me the slightest twinge.

“And here I am. I came back for her. I came back for you. Because she’ll never leave you behind.”

Another flash-and her eyes are wide now, and they seem to hold the light. Her voice is still a whisper, but its hush is no longer lifeless. “You-you came back here-to save us. .”

“I can’t do it alone, Tizarre. I need you. We can save Marade.”

Thunder rolls by. Louder.

Some god sounds angry.

“We can save everybody.”

The next flash of lightning gives me the answer on her filth-crusted face, and that answer gives me a brief sick twist just below my heart.

Maybe I was lying about that not the slightest twinge part, too.

››scanning fwd››

The thunder crashes before the flare of lightning fades, and the cloudburst roar almost covers her half- strangled snarls as her hands twitch and shudder and spasm themselves back to life.

“. . nahh . . shit-” The rain erases any tears before they reach her cheeks. The cords bulging from her jaw to her collarbone pick up faerie-fire highlights from the faint blue glow of the gluey mud that packs the bandages on her legs. “Never thought I’d be happy to hurt this bad. .”

I shrug at her from the doorway. “Pain’s just God’s way of reminding you you’re alive.”

“Then. . gahhh. . maybe I need a kinder god. .”

“We all do.” I come out of my squat. “That’s enough. Get too clean, you’ll smell human again.”

“All right.” She nods and wipes a smear of snot from her nose onto the back of one shaky forearm. “All right, help me in.”

I pull her back into the dry and settle her against a wall while I smear her bare feet with one of the last of the glands.

“What are you doing?”

“They can still track us if they try hard enough, but this way we at least won’t draw their noses unless they already know we’re here.”

“Those are-”

“Scent glands. Grills carry them under their jaws, in the palms of their hands and the soles of their feet. A subtler way of marking territory than just pissing around.”

“You-cut them out? Out of their-”

“What do you think keeps me ahead of these fuckers? Good looks and charm? Come on.” I pick her up, sling her arm over my shoulder, and half carry her into the winding dark.

“Where are we going?”

The one safe place in the entire fucking Boedecken. “Somewhere you can’t get to until you’ve already been there.”

Deep into the black. I count steps, listening for rainfall ahead, landmarks where the ceilings have caved in. Up and up, and up some more, and she’s gasping against my shoulder. “How do you-don’t they search?”

“Not on foot. Not anymore.” Her weight turns my chuckle into a grunt. “I guess they decided that’s a bad idea.”

“But-magick? They have magick-”

“It’s not-” Shit, she’s getting heavier. “-thaumaturgy. It’s theurgy. They have to petition their god for power.”

“So?”

“So I killed their high fucking priestess. The big bitch with the headdress of black feathers.”

“You-how could you possibly-?”

“Easier than you think. You could say it was luck, but I don’t think so.”

Now I do manage a low laugh. A real one, dark as the storm outside. “I’m pretty sure their god’s on my side.”

››scanning fwd››

She huddles against the dust-dry rock, arms crossed over her breasts, dripping dirty rain into the sand. The rose-pale glow from the Tear puts a blush on her bare skin that could make her look healthy, if not for the shivering, if not for the pain and bleak horror in her eyes.

“It was really here,” she keeps murmuring while I dig through the pile of old bones and armor and weapons and shit for a tunic and pants and boots. “It was really here, all this time. .”

“Yeah.”

“And we never would have found it.”

“Yeah. That’s the magick on it. If I’d been looking for it, I couldn’t have found it either.”

Her eyes are wide. I wish it could be wonder. “This is. . all this gear. . it’s from home?”

“Nah.” I give her an apologetic shake of the head. “That was. . well, this is mostly shit I found here. We’re not the first people in the last thousand years to come hunting the Tear. Some of them died here for reasons other than Black Knives.”

“But-”

“And some of it’s our shit. Some of it’s stuff I took off Black Knives this past day. They were carrying useful things besides their scent-mark glands.”

Awe wipes the pain-twist from her face. “You’re the skinwalker.”

“The what?”

“A monster-a shapeshifter-kind of the ogrillo boogeyman.” She smears wet hair back from her eyes. “I heard them talking about it-about you-”