Caine Black Knife

gloried roll, freeman.”

Knight Aeddharr passed the gauntlets to another of the armsmen. His hands were large and square. The fingers on those hands were short and thick and looked about as nimble as wagon spokes. And about as soft.

This was going to suck.

“So.” I let my knees bend a couple degrees, quadriceps and femoral biceps taking the weight that shifted slightly forward, onto the balls of my feet. A breath or two of Control Discipline goosed my adrenals. Everything went bright and slow. “This is where the gloves come off. As it were.”

“Of a certainty.” Tyrkilld opened those large square hands and spread them in a man-to-man shrug of regretful necessity. “A mailed hand may well slay before you reveal the truth that God and the Justiciar require.”

“You can just ask-”

“Oh, that I intend. Pynhall.”

I saw it coming: the Control Disciplines had my reflexes hyped enough for that. I saw it clearly. Not that it mattered.

Just a slap. Open-handed. A wide flat palm that crawled with eldritch blue witchfire came up from hip level to the corner of my jaw like it had been shot from a rifle. I didn’t even manage to blink before the room whited out and thunder crashed into the tolling of the vast carillons that call the Beloved Children to Assumption Day worship at the White Cathedral and I bounced off something hard and fell on something harder and when the world darkened back into existence and the bells began to fade to distant chimes I was on hands and knees on a stone floor, staring at a blurred and doubling pair of jointed steel sabatons caked with brownish-red mud, and Christ my head hurt and I gave it a shake that made it hurt worse and I said-

“Wow.”

“Do we understand each other, now?”

I didn’t risk another shake of my head. It might fall off.

“You have a gift for expressing yourself.”

“You’re not the first to notice, freeman.” The Knight took a respectful step back. “You may wish to rise. It’s best to be on your feet, and a fair distance from the nearest wall. I’ve good control with Khryl’s Hand, but there’s little help for you on the secondary impact.”

I made it to one knee and looked up into the Knight’s kindly round faces: all three of them. I closed my eyes, opened them, squinted, and there were only two. “Am I gonna live through this?”

“That remains to be seen. Up you go, then.”

My legs’d never make it. “I’m good right here, thanks. How do I get this to stop?”

“Tell me what I want to know.”

“And if I can’t?”

“I’m certain you can.”

“Then we have a problem.”

Armor creaked with Tyrkilld’s shrug. “You do.”

I looked around for something to lean on. The movement threatened to split my skull. “And if I Challenge?”

“We’ll take that as understood, shall we? What are you, grade six?” Tyrkilld chuckled indulgently. “Strike at your own inclination.”

“Oh, sure. Thanks.” Leaning with both hands on my bent knee, I let a few more breaths siphon clarity back inside my head. “This is about Orbek?”

“Was that a mystery? The Order of Khryl and the Civility of the Battleground have an interest in the dealings of this ogrillo of yours.”

“He’s not my ogrillo.” A hand to my temple helped squeeze the silent thunderstorm back down inside my skull. “He’s my brother.”

“So you told Knight Khershaw. And Our Lord of Valor still hears no lie.” Tyrkilld shook his head amiably. “With you a Monastic, too. An Esoteric. Likely an assassin.”

“I’m retired.”

“Not so long ago, you would have been mortal enemies.”

“We were. We got over it.”

“How this came about must be an interesting tale-”

“A long one, anyway.” Too fucking long. “It tells better than it lived.”

“-but it concerns me not at all. My first interest lies in what you will tell me about Freedom’s Face.”

“I’m sure I’d have a snappy comeback if my head didn’t hurt so damn much. What the hell is Freedom’s Face?”

Tyrkilld sounded honestly regretful. “Pynhall’t.”

I saw it coming again. Didn’t matter this time either. It was the other hand. Which also didn’t matter.

I was on my back when my eyes twitched open. The muscles on the right side of my neck were being chewed away by rabid squirrels. I couldn’t see them. Or hear them, or touch them when I pawed weakly at the pain. But they were enthusiastic little fuckers. Industrious.

A beige smear that was probably Tyrkilld’s face hovered in the middle distance overhead.

“Bodes fair to be a Minor Penance in this for me.” His voice had a vaguely oceanic quality, like distant surf. “Freeman Shade, I must tell you that by happenstance-by sad coincidence, for you-my dear father, a Knight of much greater valor and reknown than my poor self, was foully murdered. By a Monastic assassin. Are we becoming still more clear?”

Stone bled into flesh and back out again and my arms and legs spasmed at random; I couldn’t even roll over. “Fuck . . me. .”

“Though I know well it’s a dark sin to condemn a man for his brother’s crime, I discover I can’t help enjoying myself. Just a bit. Hence cometh my expectation of the Minor Penance I lately mentioned; I find myself hoping, in a shadowed corner of my tarnished soul, that you’ll play games and be evasive and insist upon this immoral defiance of yours, so that I might deliver Khryl’s Hand unto your sinning head, here, until out from your eye sockets leak the shreds of your vile Monastic brains.”

Use leaked back into my body. I made it onto my side and curled around the medicine ball of barbed wire that swelled under my ribs.

“I’d feel bad for you. . about your dad and your tarnished soul and all-” A trail of blood from my mouth made a tiny fading spiral on the stone floor. “-if you weren’t beating the crap out of me right now.”

“Can you stand, then?”

“Do I have to?”

“You won’t like it if I use the boot.”

“I’m no fan of the hand, either.” I put out one of my own. “All right, wait. I’m getting up. Give a guy a couple seconds, can you?”

Tyrkilld opened arms to either side of an indulgent smile.

I found one of the built-out brick benches and pushed myself up. The room spun around me and the walls pulsed and my stomach heaved and I staggered past an armsman and made it to the brass chamberpot in the corner in time to decisively lose the cheese and nuts and dried fruit I’d snacked on an hour or two ago.

On my knees again, leaning on the chamberpot, I spat bloody vomit. “Does it matter I’m telling the truth?”

“Each true word scrubs one stain from your filthy heart,” Tyrkilld said agreeably.

“I never heard of this Freedom’s Face shit until you said the words just now.”

“Go to, freeman. Try not my patience.”

I got my feet under me and swayed upright. “You’re the one with truth-sense, shithead. Am I lying?”

Tyrkilld sighed. “Freeman Shade, are you the man to convince me that Our Lord of Valor’s ear for truth cannot be misled by the dark magicks of the elves?”

The vomit-knotted fist in my stomach clenched tighter. “Elves?”

“Next you’ll try to tell me that it’s pure coincidence that an Ankhanan Esoteric has come to visit this Ankhanan Orbek Black Knife just now.”

“Ankhanan. .? Oh, fuck.” I put a hand to my eyes. “Fuck me like a virgin goat. Freedom’s Face.