Caine Black Knife

PRATT AND REDHORN

The Pratt and Redhorn was a small but well-appointed hostelry of three floors and maybe twenty-odd rooms that occupied a lively corner of the River-dock parish not far from the vigilry. I paid off the cartboy and tracked rain through the foyer.

A sign on the table in the tiny lobby advised me in three languages to ring the bell for service, so I did. Tobacco and meat smoke and considerable noise-voices raised in drunken song, accompanied by the planking of tuneless metallic percussion-billowed through a half-doored archway, which was blocked by a sign that advised, with apologies in the same three languages, that the dining hall was reserved for a private function. My sigh was more than half growl when I rang the bell again, louder.

I was in no mood. For anything.

I don’t know what reaction I’d been expecting out of t’Passe. It sure as hell wasn’t a gleam in her hard bright eyes and a nod and a brisk I’ve been wondering how it might turn out.

I didn’t make a hassle over it at first; after all, she’d been still unconscious in the Monastic Embassy infirmary on the day I’d driven Kosall into the stone at the upstream tip of Old Town and let Ma’elKoth’s flame flow through my hands to destroy that fucking blade forever. But when I reminded the World’s Greatest Living Expert On Me of this detail of trivia, she just shrugged. “Destroyed? Not while you live, I suspect.”

She was making my stomach hurt. “You better explain what you mean by that.”

“It is so intimately linked with your legend that the two of you are inextricable. Think: this is the blade that killed you, Caine, on Assumption Day, and thus plowed the field for your rebirth into-”

“Except I wasn’t exactly dead.”

She shrugged again. “Seven years in what our hosts name the True Hell? Argue semantics if you like. This is also the weapon that slaughtered the goddess Pallas Ril-”

“Except she’s not exactly dead either.”

“We speak of legend. Of what is known. It is known that you used this same blade to bring her back from beyond even Hell, and on the Day of the True Assumption you-again with the sword-unbound the Ascendant Ma’elKoth to make Him Master of Home. Kosall and you are virtually one and the same. Even its name-I’ve done a bit of research on that-”

“Of course you have.”

“Do you want to hear it?”

“Would it matter if I don’t?”

“ ‘Kosall,’ ” she’d said with a slightly malicious smile, “turns out to be a Westerlicized corruption of the Lipkan Kh’Hohtsanjanell, which means, in their usual straightforward fashion, Blade That Cuts Everything.”

I’m not ashamed to say that I actually flinched. “Deliann-Deliann once called me that-”

“I know.” The malice in that smile had faded back behind the smug. “I was there.”

“But-that’s just a name-those are just stories-”

“You,” she said severely, “are fighting the hook. Are you-you of all men-trying to claim that names do not signify? That there is such a thing as just a story?”

I had plenty of wriggle left in me. “Are you claiming that stories count for more than what actually happened?”

“What ‘actually happened’ depends on whom one asks, doesn’t it?” She grinned at me. “And once you explain what ‘actually happened,’ aren’t you merely replacing their story with yours?”

“Fuck that.” I was getting angry all over again. “No story is gonna make something unhappen. No story is gonna turn a fucking pile of slag at the tip of Old Town back into a magick sword and drop it five hundred years in the past-”

“Unless,” she said, all seriousness now, shading into grim, “a god is telling it.”

I didn’t answer. She poked her goddamn cane at my chest. “You know it’s true. That’s what’s really been on your mind. That’s what has you at a rolling boil.”

“This is exactly the kind of shit Jereth and Jantho started killing gods over,” I said.

She nodded. “Using, if your intuition is correct, a sword that had already been and would someday be used to slay three gods anew.”

“Three-?”

“Pallas Ril, Ma’elKoth, and-”

I interrupted her with a maybe unnecessarily forceful “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

“Still. .” She got up and limped toward a stack of books on the floor by the inner doorway. “Are you certain it was Kosall? Could it not have been the black runeblade?”

“The what?”

“The one you found in the chamber. .” She opened one of the volumes and started leafing through it. “It was in your report. . I have notes on it, let’s see-”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

She looked up from the book. “The one you used to unleash the river.”

I shook my head, uncomprehending. “I used the bladewand.”

“No. Here it is: a hand and a half blade, polished blue-black, chased with silver runes-”

“I’m telling you, I used the bladewand. It’s the only reason I lived through it-through any kind of material weapon, feedback would have killed me-”

“Apparently not.”

“Let me see that-”

“The original report is at Garthan Hold, of course. But I have read it, and my memory is, I believe, flawless. You came across the blade in the chamber of the Tear of Panchasell-”

“Your memory is fucked.”

She cocked her head. “Though it is a curious coincidence-a black blade with silver runes-Kosall was a silver blade, and were the runes on it not black-?”

“Will you stop?”

But of course she wouldn’t, and the harder I argued the less sure I got, because pretty soon I discovered that I just couldn’t really remember if I had used the bladewand or if I’d found some motherfucking reversed-color image of Kosall, and my head was pounding like something was alive in there and chipping its way out with a ten-pound hammer and a railroad spike, so I just left.

Which is how I ended up in the foyer of the Pratt amp; Redhorn in a dripping-wet foul mood, jamming my hand down on the service bell like it was the top of t’Passe’s pointy fucking head.

After a moment a thin, pale, tired-looking man with a few scraps of hair plastered sideways over his sweat-dripping scalp slipped around the sign. He was drying his hands on a brown apron, which then went up to mop clean a swath across his face as he came forward, shaking his head. “I wish I could offer you welcome, my friend.” His accent was Ankhanan. “We’re full up for the night, and I’m afraid-”

“Why does everybody around here want to be my friend?”

The thin, pale man stopped, blinking. “Why, I–I don’t mean anything by it, goodman-”

“Forget about it. It’s not goodman, it’s freeman. I’m Dominic Shade. Somebody delivered my trunk.”

The man’s face cleared. “Oh, Freeman Shade! Welcome! I’m Lasser Pratt. Always good to welcome a countryman. Oh, this is fine. I’d become afraid you might’n’t make it. Lord Tarkanen’s order-and your trunk-got here just in time for us to get you into our last room tonight-it’s on the top floor, I hope you don’t-”

“As long as it’s dry.” I nodded toward the raucous dining hall. “Look, I can see you’re busy with the party. You think I can just get a plate of something hot to take up to my room?”

“Oh, not at all, no no no, not at all. Please, Freeman Shade, you’re welcome at the party-”

“I am?”

Pratt gave a nod that was half shake of his head. “Oh, yes, very much so-and not only because you are a guest of Lord Tarkanen. They, ah-customs on the Battleground-are. . well, I’m Ankhanan by birth myself, y’know, from New Bend, d’you know it? Just three days downriver-”

“Yeah, I’ve been there. Skip the blowjob, huh? I just want some dry clothes and a hot meal.”

“I, ah, well. .” Pratt’s grin deflated. He rubbed his eyes. “Sorry. Force of habit.”

“Forget it. I know what it’s like to work for a living.”

“But you really are invited to the party-”

“Maybe later. I have to go right out again.”

“On a night like this? You have business that won’t wait till morning?”

“You wouldn’t happen to know if that Tyrkilld character spends his nights in the vigilry, would you?”

“Knight Aedharr?” Pratt nodded toward the smoke billowing through the dining-hall door. “He’s right in there.”

“You’re putting me on.”

“If only I were,” he sighed. “My eldest went Khryllian-he’s an armsman of this very parish, still has hopes of Knighthood some day. One of the fingers in his own fist was killed this morning. Braehew, his name was.”

“Yeah.” My too-empty stomach suddenly knotted, and a phantom stab brought my hand to my right side. “I was there.”

“I know you were.” Pratt made ushering gestures toward the doorway. “That’s why you’re invited.”

I stared.

Pratt spread his palms. “Like I was saying: On the Battleground, customs are. . different.”

I went to the half door and looked in.

The party must have been going on for a while already.

Tables and chairs had been shoved aside from half the dining hall’s floor, to make room for what looked like some cross between square-dancing and jujitsu. Other tables were piled with meats and bread and loaves of cheese, and everywhere were steel cups and tankards and schooners, most lying empty, tumbled and forgotten on tabletop or chair seat or kicked out of the way of the dancers.

“They don’t look too broken up about it.”

Pratt was at my shoulder now, looking past me into the dining hall. “It’s a celebration. A victory party.”

“Come again?”

The hosteler shrugged. “Braehew was killed in battle, discharging the lawful command of his superior. Falling with honor, he goes to join Khryl’s Own. From the Khryllian point of view, what greater victory can he hope for?”

I cocked my head. “Living through it?”

Pratt chuckled. “And that’s why Ankhanans never quite fit in around here. Well, from my angle, I’m told you played no more than the part Khryl wrote for you, if you know what I mean. They’ll be happy to make you welcome.”

“I’ll bet.”

Customs are customs-but the laughter was too loud and too sharp, the singing was too hoarse, and the smiles on too many lips left too many eyes too blank. Looked like there had been too many of these victory parties lately. I stared over the half door and let the loudest and sharpest of the laughter and the hoarsest of the singing draw my eye.

Dimly through the smoke I could make out the barrel shape of Tyrkilld, Knight Aeddhar, seated in the far corner on a vast chair set atop a table like a mockery of a throne. He was out of uniform for the second time that day, wearing only the wool-woven vest-over-belted-sweater, sheepskin breeches and boots of a Jheledi shepherd. In one hand he held a vast bucket of a cup, big enough he could have worn it as a helmet; the other hand was occupied by keeping a giggling twenty-something redheaded girl firmly attached to his knee. She was the only woman in the room not wearing the Khryllian crewcut and armsman colors; she had a slightly-too-short-for-modesty print dress gathered around trim thighs, and a somewhat longer apron belted too tightly around an also-trim waist.

“Pretty waitress. Jheledi?” I said sidelong. “Should know better than to turn her loose around Tyrkilld.”

“As if I have a choice,” Pratt said sourly. “She’s my wife.”

“Really? And you have a kid old enough to be an-oh, I get it. Married the serving girl, huh?” I glanced over my shoulder. “No wonder you look tired.”

The hosteler sighed. “It’s a long story.”

“They all are, buddy.”

Pratt snorted half a laugh. “Now you’re the one who wants to be friends.”

I chuckled. “Fair enough. Listen, I need to talk with Tyrkilld, but I really don’t want to walk into that party. Is there any place here where he and I can sit down and have a quiet drink?”

“Well-” Pratt frowned. “There’s the grill side-I closed it down for the night-”

“Grill side? You serve ogrilloi here?” I blinked. “Is that legal?”

Pratt’s tired face took on a flush of red. “I may live on the Battleground, but I’m still Ankhanan-I’m no damned bigot, and if you-”

“Easy. I’m just asking.”

“I-uh. Sorry.” He passed a hand over his face and used the sweat from his forehead to slick back his thinning hair. “Long night. Sorry. Yes, it’s legal. We do very good trade among the eligibles, especially at daymeal. We just have to keep the dining areas separate.” He waved a hand toward a door under the stairs. “We can set a table for you on the grill side. It won’t be anything fancy.”

“As long as it’s quiet.”

“Oh, I can guarantee that. Give us a moment or two-”

“No problem. I need a chance to get into some dry clothes and warm up a little. Set me a plate of something hot, huh? I don’t care what, so long as there’s meat and a lot of it. I’ll make it worth your trouble.”

“Don’t think of it. Really. It’s no trouble at all.”

“You’re a goddamn liar.”

“Truth is flexible in this line of work,” Pratt said easily. “Oh, and-it won’t be a problem for you to be served by an ogrillo, will it?”

“Why would it?” I smiled faintly. “Aren’t I Ankhanan too?”

The meal turned out to be half a roast duckling with black cherry sauce and glazed walnuts over duck sausage dressing, and a peppered baked apple stuffed with pulled-pork confit. The ogrillo server turned out to also be the head cook and kitchen manager, an immense pudding-waisted eligible named Kravmik Red Horn: Lazzevget.

The junior partner.

Seemed Pratt took his Ankhanan principles seriously.

“Good man, good as they get,” Kravmik proudly proclaimed in a voice deep enough to vibrate the tabletop as he spun a steel cup of water and a mug of his own iced homebrew into place around the plate. “And I’m not talking flavor, either, hrk!”

“Mm-mmm.” I was too busy chewing to give a civil answer. There was a smoky tang to the limpid crust of fat under the skin of the duck breast that twisted my heart with unexpected, entirely astonishing longing for something I couldn’t quite recall. . something in the beer, too. . something dark, burnt-chocolate on the nose but fading and dry on the tongue. .

Gods, it was good. My eyes stung. What was that flavor. .?

Kravmik was more than capable of holding up both ends of the conversation. Before the half duckling was half gone, he had roughed out the highlights of the Pratt amp; Redhorn’s history, including thumbnail sketches of the more colorful members of the staff, the notables who’d stayed there, the luminaries who made a point of dining there, and, of course, the ongoing kitchen-sink romance of Lasser Pratt and his wild young Jheledi bride, even wilder now that she’d stopped nursing their infant twins and had a bit of freedom and got herself a pair of respectable tits in the bargain, not to mention the inappropriate amount of attention she was receiving from the Younger Pratt, who had a new bride of his own, y’know, and a child soon to be along as well-

Finally I stopped chewing long enough to stem the flood with a raised hand and a thoughtful “You speak better Westerling than any ogrillo I’ve ever met. Better than the Ankhanan ones, in fact.”

Kravmik opened hands the size of saucepans. “Want to get ahead, you gotta talk the talk, that’s what Pratt always says. He works with me. Helps me be presentable. Pratt says pretty soon my Westerling will be good as his. Good as yours.”

“Huh. In Ankhana, grills talk different on purpose. They’re proud of it.”

Kravmik nodded. “Pratt says that too. And he says they’re mostly thugs. Best jobs they can get is strongarm stuff, and they mostly die young. Me, I got stuff to live for.” He swung one of those hands at the kitchen. “Sure, I’m eligible, but I got staff here, they’re my family-ellie, human, whatever. Cubs ain’t everything in the world, y’know. Just bein’ alive’s worth something. Worth a lot.”

“Yeah.” I stared down at my plate. “I have a friend I’m hoping I can convince of that.”

“Hey, you’re not eatin’-it’s all right? That stuffing get cold?”

“No-no, it’s great. I just ran out of appetite.” I pushed the plate away, picked up the water cup, set it down again, and shoved aside the mug of iced beer. “Got anything to drink? I mean drink.”

“We do a little freeze-wine, from last winter-crack off the water-ice, and what’s left is-”

I made a face. “Real drink.”

Kravmik shook his head dolefully. “Can’t make fortified stuff. Nobody does-brandy’s illegal. And the import duty’s just impossible.”

“Shit. I’d start a revolution too.” I waved a hand. “All right. More of the beer, then. And ask Pratt if he can tell Tyrkilld I’m over here now.”

“Knight Aeddhar?” Astonishment tinged with suspicion flickered across the huge ogrillo’s face. “What’s he got to do with you? Why would he care you’re here?”

“He’ll care. That beer, huh?”

Kravmik’s professionalism overcame his skepticism enough that he only ducked his head and cleared away the remains of the meal. The beer arrived shortly before Tyrkilld did.

The Jheledi Knight moved around the empty tables in the gloom with the slow, dignified zags of a three-master tacking into the wind, one vast fist still wrapped around the stem of the bucket-size flagon. When he got to the table, he blinked down at the grease stains on the wadded napkin beside the mug of iced beer.

“You,” he said with ponderous precision. “Are not here. For the party.”

“Got that right. Sit down before you fall down.”

“While I am indebted. To you, master Monassbite Esoterassbite assassassassbite, for your kind hospitassitude. I would prefer to stand, fuck you very much.” Tyrkilld blinked again. “What are you doing here?”

“Your buddy Markham got me a room. By no fucking coincidence at all. Quite a sense of humor, that sonofabitch.”

“While I freely admit. To a catalogue of sins innumerable. Mortal, venial, and merely cheerful.” He swayed, and swung the flagon in a violent circle that managed to spill not a drop. “Accuse me but once more of being friend to Lord Tarkanen, sir, and we shall again. Make trial. Of Khryl’s Justice.”

He unleashed a belch that rattled the windows and seemed to unstring his knees, and he delicately settled the flagon on the tabletop and himself into the waiting chair. “A room, you say? Perhaps I may assay your Monassbite hospitassitude after all-a scrap of floor makes bed enow betimes-”

“I thought you had a call to make tonight-the Widow Braehew-?”

“And from whence gather’st thou requisite testicle to lecture a Knight of House Aeddhar upon the obligations of-”

“Yeah, yeah, ring of dog’s piss, goatherd and a sling, you told me already.” I squinted at him. For Khryllians, the obligations of command are absolute. . though there may be certain details of some obligations which no one could blame him for failing to fulfill, should the failure arise of incapacity due to doing a bit too much honor to the memory of a departed liegeman. . “All right, goddammit. What’s in the flagon?”

Tyrkilld blinked. “Your pardon?”

I leaned forward. “There is no possible way in Home or Hell you got completely pisseyed just on this crapass beer. I want to know what you’re drinking, and I want some.”

Tyrkilld’s face took on the sly cast of a man who’s drunk so much he thinks he’s sober, and he leaned far enough backward that he was in danger of toppling over. “First you share this issue of such. Staggering import that it warrants. Coming between a poor thirsty Knight and his much-deserved imbibulation. Then perhaps the matter of the contents of my flagon might arise, as it were, willy-nilly.”

He was bringing back my headache. “Do any other Jheledi talk like you, or is this just something you put on to aggravate people?”

Tyrkilld lifted the flagon and took such a long, slow sip that the studded steel rim of the cup strategically covered what might have otherwise looked like a long, slow wink. “And is that a matter of any great import at this dire hour?”

“Since when do Jheledi nobility go Khryllian, anyway? Last I heard, the noble houses of Jheled considered Lipke an occupying power up until Ankhana took you away from them in the Plains War, thousand years or not.”

Tyrkilld made another expansive whirl of the flagon. “There is not a blessed thing wrong with the service of Khryl, my lad. Saving only the company.”

“Yeah.” The iced beer in my hand got real interesting all of a sudden. “I talked with the lady in question. Thanks for delivering my message.”

He assayed what he undoubtedly thought was a subtle glance around the empty dining hall. “And no harm it did me. Thus far, as it were.”

I nodded. “We were going to talk about how I spotted you.”

He held up one of those hands that I was still too overly familiar with. “Nay, that I have determined. ’Twas my amateurish questioning, was it not? That I started with Freedom’s Face, and my foolish reference to elven magicks foiling Khryllian truthsense, and moving on too easily once I found you might have knowledge enough to do damage. .”

“So you’re not quite an idiot.”

“In my own defense, Master Monassbite, let me aver that your estimable self was to be loaded in pieces back onto the afternoon steamboat and sent south to heal over the course of some months. Or years. In which case my minor slips would have signified not at all.”

I nodded into my beer. “Shit just never quite goes the way we plan, though, huh?”

“Never quite, my lad. Never quite.”

“You and I need to talk about what Our Mutual Slag is really up to, here. And what we’re gonna do about it.”

“Do we now?” He unleashed another window-rattling belch. “That is to say: now? You’d be hard put to argue this as the best time for such news.”

“There’s never a good time.” I pushed my chair back from the sagging table and leaned on my knees. I picked at the ridges of callus across my knuckles. “Shit never happens when you’re ready for it. When you’re healthy and full of beans and spoiling to take on the world, the world leaves you the fuck alone. It always waits till you’ve got the flu and your dog’s sick and the mortgage is late and y’know, whatever. That’s when it gets you up the ass.”

Tyrkilld nodded, his sloppy grin fading to half a faint smile. “You speak with the air of a man having some small experience of planetary buggery.”

I tried for a smile and missed. “Funny thing is, before all this started, I was pretty goddamn close to happy. Happier than I think I’ve ever been. I was free. Really free, for I think the first time ever. I had the whole world open in front of me. I was happy. And now I’ve jumped into this shitpool with both feet.”

“Happy men,” Tyrkilld said, leaning forward to lay a brick of a hand on my arm, “are only half alive.”

I decided not to tell him my life could be read as a chain of evidence establishing exactly that. “I figure you’re a decent guy, Tyrkilld. As low-rent cock-sucking thugs go, y’know.”

“Gracious as ever.”

“I figure you wouldn’t really be in this if you had the faintest fucking clue what was really going on. Freeing enslaved ogrilloi doesn’t have shit to do with it. Freeing ogrilloi is only a means to an end.”

Tyrkilld swayed a bit. “And-? You’ll have to help me, lad; I’m no master of the mental arts even when sober.”

“Freedom’s Face is a cover for an Ankhanan insurgency. Because even now, nobody wants to fight the Knights of Khryl straight up. Not even the Empire.”

The Knight’s eyes went round. “Fight us? Ankhana?”

“If they have to.”

“For what? What do we have that they could possibly want?”

“This.” I waved a hand. “Everything. All of it.”

“The Battleground?” He looked dazed. “The vast Ankhanan Empire covets our poor scrap of a corner of the Boedecken Waste-? What for? Hasn’t your bloody elven sorceror of an Emperor land enough already?”

“It’s not about the land. It’s about what’s here. It’s about your Artan guests and BlackStone Mining. It’s-complicated.”

“Are we so short of time?”

“Maybe. And I’m not sure I could make you understand why they want it anyway. And you’re sure as hell short of brains right now. No offense.”

“None taken; freely admitted, my lad. Freely admitted. And how do you come by this sudden trove of intelligence that Khryl Himself avowed you lacked only this morning?”

“People tell me things. When I ask them nicely. You should give it a fucking try someday.”

Tyrkilld’s wariness evaporated into a sudden chuckle. “Red Horn! A flagon! And one for the freeman!” He pounded the table with the flat of his hand. It cracked, and sagged in the middle.

He blinked at it, then shrugged. “And so pray, Master Monassbite, if it would please your Imperial Lordliness to impart to a poor humble hedge Knight one last pittance of your Shining Verity. . why bring’st you this news to my insufficiently sober self? I can barely hope to remember it, much less take action. .”

“Nobody told you to get pisseyed.”

He leaned back again and favored me with a long, slow, alchoholically deliberate scrutiny. “If what you’ve told me is true, you understand that what you’ve just done is. . well, for want of a kinder word, one can only call it treason.”

I shrugged. “I’ve done worse.”

Tyrkilld blinked, blinked again, and then unleashed a roar of laughter. “I’ll drink to that!” He peered around. “Or I would. . Red Horn! Where’s my swill?”

He slapped the cracked table. It split with a groan and collapsed. The kitchen doors banged open again and Kravmik lumbered in, another bucket-size flagon in one hand and a civilized cup in the other. “And here we go-grk. For love of-Tyrkilld, you break another my table!”

“Bring on the swill,” said the Knight with a lordly wave. “Put the table on my account.”

“Bet I will,” the ogrillo grumbled as he set the flagon and the cup on the edge of the nearest undamaged table. “Be more careful, you, hey?”

“So you two know each other, huh?”

Ogrillo and Knight looked at each other before looking at me with expressions of mildly inquisitive innocence.

“No taking a knee. Not even a ‘the Knight thisandthat.’ Not to mention your own private barrel of whateverthefuck this is.”

Tyrkilld yawned and smacked his lips. “I’m not in Khryl’s Battledress, and thus informality is no insult. As for the barrel-”

“’S just grillswill,” Kravmik said. He hung his head a little. “The Knight Aeddhar’s gotten a taste for it, that’s all. So I keep a barrel topped up for him. And in exchange, he makes sure the parish armsmen don’t bust up my pot still.”

“Pot still?” I sat up straighter. “Pot still as in distill?”

“And a nasty vile fluid it dispenses, too,” Tyrkilld sighed, reaching for the flagon. “He boils the alchohol off his beer, capturing the spirit in a long coiled tube of-”

“Wait. Stop. Both of you. Hot staggering fuck.” I lurched to my feet. “Grill-swill is distilled beer?”

“Not so loud,” Kravmik muttered. “I know we’re alone here, but it’s not completely legal, you understand?”

“Or even at all,” Tyrkilld said, taking a long draught. “And for good reason too.”

“Give me that.” I snatched the cup off the table. Inside was a very pale, almost colorless liquid. . with that dark, burnt-chocolate scent. . but also some heather, and honey, and exotic spice. .

That was the smell. The taste that had brought tears to my eyes.

I remembered now: Orbek recounting the boogeyman stories his father used to tell him. About marsh ghouls in the Boedecken, who’d lure you out into the bogs and suck out your eyeballs and pull you down. . into the 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.”

“I know. And I don’t think I can explain.”

Pratt took a step back. The apron fell forgotten from his opening fingers. “Are-are you threatening me-?”

“Listen to me. You have to go. All of you. Forget about cleaning up. You can do that later. If there is a later. Things are in motion here-I’ve started things in motion-”

I shook my head, and my teeth found the sore spot on the inside of my lip. “It’s about to get bad here. I don’t know how bad. Maybe worse than it’s ever been. If you don’t go now. .” I sighed. “You may not get the chance. You could be dead. You and your pretty wife. And your baby twins. Dead ugly.”

“What-” Pratt’s mouth was slack, and what little color his cheeks had ever had was now somewhere south of his collar. “I don’t understand-what are you talking about?”

“I’m trying to save your life.”

Pratt was pleading now. “Why are you saying these things to me?”

“That’s the funny part.” My laugh didn’t sound amused, even to me. “It’s because I like you.”

Pratt only looked helpless.

“I like your place. You do a good thing here at a fair price, and you treat people better than you have to. You’re the kind of guy the world needs more of.”

“So you’re-so you’re scaring the crap out of me-?”

“Take a fucking vacation, Pratt. Take your pretty wife and your new kids south on the first steamer tomorrow. Go someplace nice. Here will not be nice. Here could get you all dead.”

“But I can’t-I can’t just-”

“I’m not kidding, Pratt.”

Pratt gave himself a little shake and managed an unsteady laugh. He swiped the thinning hair sideways across his scalp. “I. . appreciate the-uh, the warning, Freeman Shade. I do. But really, the Battleground is the safest place on Home-”

“Not anymore.”

“Well.” He sighed. “It’s the middle of the night, and my place is a wreck. I can’t make any moves until tomorrow, can I? And meanwhile, there’s still work to do, so if you don’t mind excusing me, freeman-”

I hung my head. I hate this part.

“Freeman?”

Hate it.

“Er, Freeman Shade, if you don’t mind, I really do have-”

My hand seized Pratt’s shirtfront faster than he could blink. The hosteler had just barely enough time to draw breath for a shout of alarm before my other hand flicked out to lay my palm gently along his cheek.

“You know me.”

Pratt’s shout of alarm died in his throat. His mouth worked. His eyes stared wildly for an instant, then squeezed shut, and he clapped his hands over his face and his legs buckled. He threw himself to his knees at my feet.

“Forgive me-forgive me, Lord, I did not know thee-!”

“Get up.”

Shivering on the floor, face pressed into his knees, Pratt moaned. “Ma’elKoth is Lord of Gods and Master of Home, and Caine is His One True Hand. . Ma’elKoth is Lord of Gods and Master of Home, and Caine is His One True Hand. .”

“Get up. Don’t grovel. I hate groveling.”

Pratt lifted a face transfigured by terror and awe. “My Lord?”

“And those bloody Psalms. They’re so depressing.” I pressed a hand to my head, blinking. How much of that damned grillswill had I drunk, anyway? “Just get up, huh?”

“As the Prince of Chaos commands-”

“And stop it with that shit.”

“As the-”

“Shut up.”

Pratt stood in a half crouch, cringing away from me.

“So take it as coming from Ma’elmotherfuckingKoth Himself, all right? Get thee fucking hence from this place, goddammit.”

Pratt barely allowed himself to whisper, “As the Prince of Chaos commands. .”

I left Pratt shaking on the foyer rug and stomped up the stairs toward my room.

Christ, I hate that shit.