FIFTEEN

THE PATRIARCH’S LEFT hand trembled ever so slightly, as the tip of its middle finger marked a drier line through the sweat that beaded his brow. Then this unsteady hand slid along his cheek to cup the corner of his jaw, feeling for fever; a moment later it massaged the swollen glands in his throat.

“Is His Radiance unwell?” the Eyes of God officer asked somewhat anxiously. “Shall I summon a healer?”

“Not at all,” Toa-Sytell murmured. Even if he did feel ill—which he didn’t, not at all, not one little bit—he certainly wouldn’t show it before this officer.

The man could not be trusted.

“Continue your report,” he directed absently. He listened with barely half his attention to the officer’s tale of the meeting between Duke Toa-M’Jest and Caine in the Donjon cell. A premonition muttered inside his head: a dark echo of calamity’s swift approach.

“And the Duke defended the Patriarch’s honor quite vigorously,” the Eye of God was saying.

“Of course he did,” Toa-Sytell murmured. “He always does. It’s how he thinks to deceive me.”

“Your Radiance?”

“Nothing, Captain. Continue.”

“So the cell has been cleared, and Caine is being moved down into the Pit even as we speak. Shall we post additional guards?”

“Mmm? Why?”

“Well, I—” The Eyes captain shifted uneasily. “I had understood that His Radiance was concerned for Caine’s safety.”

“Me? Oh, no, no. No. That was the Duke,” Toa-Sytell said. “That was his excuse.”

“Your Radiance, that Pit is filled with men and subs that hate him. Death will inevitably follow—”

“Unquestionably,” the Patriarch murmured. “But I very much doubt this death will be Caine’s.”

2

IT TAKES ALL of a minute for me to get a grip on the way shit works in the Pit.

Dad would have loved this place: a culture in a bottle. They’ve already cycled through warlordism into a classic water monopoly—a real Lords of the Nile kind of thing, with the Serpents as the ruling civil authority and this t’Passe and her buttlickers as the fundamentalist insurgency out to reform by destabilizing yadda yadda yadda horseshit.

And there’s a lotta goddamn Serpents down here, couple hundred at least. No surprise: The Serpents were always the Kingdom of Cant’s biggest rival. Figures Majesty would use Toa-Sytell’s Cainist-purge shit to pay off old grudges.

I beckon to this t’Passe character. “Who’s the hump?” I ask, nodding at an ogrillo—a big bastard with fighting claws the size of kukhris—who walks around like all he lives for is fighting and fucking and he’s not particular about which he does to who. He’s carrying a lot of scars for a ’rillo pup his age, too. Six flunkies orbit him in swaggering arcs, and he’s giving me the fisheye: he’s got something to say, but he’s waiting for me to give him an excuse.

“He is called Orbek,” she says. “He’s become part of the Serpent organization.”

“Perfect. Get him over here for me, will you?”

She stiffens. “Am I your servant?” she asks with a frosty stare.

I give her a quizzical lift of the brow. “You mean you’re not?”

“We don’t worship you, Caine,” she says, getting that hectoring schoolmaster tone that makes me want to pop her one. “You are not a god to us, but rather the symbol of a philosophical stance—”

“Yeah, whatever, shut up, huh? You gonna do it, or should I ask somebody else?”

“I, ah . . .” She blinks, frowns while she tries to decide what her doctrinal purity might require, then sighs. “I suppose . . . I’ll go get him.”

“Hey, thanks.”

Hansen—Deliann, whatever—watches her waddle off, and he shakes his head like he’d find this all pretty funny if he wasn’t so tired. “I don’t think you’ve changed at all, Hari.”

If only that were true.

I look him over, and I have to look away. He’s not easy on the eyes; some of it is that I keep expecting to see that white plastic postsurgical mask of his, but most of it is that the last twenty-seven years haven’t done him a hell of a lot of good. He’s got a dent in his skull that’s only half scabbed over—like somebody rapped him a good one with a sword—and his hair’s growing out screwy, patchy and ragged like he’s got the mange, and every time I get a glimpse of his legs it makes me glad I’m pretty much dead below the waist.

I wonder if it’s as hard for him to look at me.

Deliann Mithondionne, the Changeling Prince, whipass-in-residence for T’farrell Ravenlock: a More in Sorrow Than in Anger legbreaker. He still has those sad puppy-eyes, though; probably still tells himself that Violence is the Last Resort.

He lowers his head like he’s afraid to look at me. “The Flowmind . . .” he begins hesitantly, “. . . I mean, the goddess—uh, Pallas Ril—she came to me a few days ago.”

I manage to get out a word. “Yeah?”

“She told me that she could create a countervirus, one that would give immunity to HRVP . . .” His voice trails off hopefully, and I can’t look at him because I don’t want to watch that hope go out of his eyes.

“She could have.” I bite down on the words hard enough to chip a tooth. “If she’d lived.”

“Then it’s true,” he says in a voice so small he might have squeezed it out his tear ducts.

“It usually is. That’s the thing about stories. One way or another.”

“There’s another story,” he murmurs. “About you and she, that the two of you were—”

“Yeah, that’s right,” I tell him. “Eleven years. Almost.”

And I can still taste the hot copper of her blood. I can still smell the steam that swirled up from her severed heart.

In his eyes, now, I can see a brutal comprehension. He whispers, “How do you stand it?”

I shake myself, hard. I can’t let him drag me back down into my private darkness. “I don’t have to stand it,” I mutter. “A few days from now, neither of us will have to stand it anymore.”

3

NOW T’PASSE’S COMING back, with Orbek and his flunkies sauntering along behind, kicking prisoners out of their way and generally making assholes of themselves. The circle of guys t’Passe put around me to hold back the crowd parts to let her through. “At your request,” she says, nodding toward Orbek.

“Swell.” I swing a hand around at the ring of Cainists. “Now tell your lapdogs to stand down.”

“Caine,” she says with exaggerated patience, “nearly every prisoner in the Pit is facing execution, accused of Cainism. Falsely accused. You are not, as you might imagine, popular here. My lapdogs, as you call them, are all that stand between you and an ugly death.”

“Nothing stands between any of us and an ugly death,” I remind her. “Now fuck off, and take your puppies with you.”

Her face ices over, and she waves to the Cainists, who reluctantly move a few paces away. The other prisoners start to crowd around, and a lot of them are shouting Down in front! and shit like that because people farther away want to be able to see. Orbek has his own flunkies clear a little space around us, while he stands there with his gorilla arms folded around his barn-sized chest.

Pretty soon things quiet down; everybody’s watching. Over at the head of the water trenches, a bunch of the Serpents stand on the bench ledge that rings the Pit, staring and grinning.

“You got something to say to me?” Orbek growls. He’s got a trace of a Boedecken accent, which explains the attitude. He might even be a Black Knife. Could I be that lucky?

“Nah,” I tell him. “I just wanted to see you up close. You look stupid enough to be a Limp Dick.”

He takes a couple long strides and towers over me; his fighting claws swing out over his closed fists. “I am Black Knife. My dead father is Black Knife, from before. From when the land likes Black Knives,” he snarls.

Well, how about that? Happy birthday to me.

I grin up into his smoldering eyes. “Tell you what, nutless: Give me a lift over to where I can get a clean drink, and I won’t hurt you.”

“Hurt me, little human?” He holds one of his fighting claws up alongside one of his tusks, so I can see how sharp they both are. “You?”

“Hey, Deliann,” I say loudly, so that everybody in the Pit can hear me, “maybe you don’t know this: In the Boedecken ogrillo dialects, the word for knife is the same as the word for fighting claw—which is a, y’know, a euphemism for penis. The Black Knife clan lived out in the Waste—up until I had a little fun with them a few years ago. By the time I got done, all the other clans were calling them the Broken Knives clan—the Limp Dicks. That’s why most of them left the Boedecken and came to the cities. They can’t get it up.”

“Hari—uh, Caine,” he says, rising uncertainly, like he’s wondering if he should get between me and Orbek. “Maybe you don’t want to go into this right now . . . ?”

“What, because of dangledick here?”

“Uh, well—”

“My father tells me about you,” Orbek begins, low and deadly.

“Fuck your father,” I suggest, then decide I should apologize. “Oh, shit, sorry—I forgot. You can’t, can you, softie?”

He reaches down and tangles one fist in my shirt. He hauls me off the ground, my useless legs dangling free, and brandishes his other claw in my face. “How limp is this?”

I snake one hand over his arm from the outside and grab the claw he was waving at me. An ogrillo’s fighting claw is like an extremely muscular extra thumb that’s jointed to the forearm below the wrist; like the thumb itself, it’s not so strong against force that vectors outside its normal range of motion. I twist it sideways and down, and Orbek gasps.

“Hey, it’s like magick,” I tell him, showing my teeth. “I’ve just turned a Limp Dick into a Jack Ass. Carry me over to where that clean water comes out of the wall, and I’ll turn you back into an ogrillo—one who hasn’t had his fighting claw torn off at the root. You follow? Play nice, and maybe you’ll get the chance to fuck your father after all.”

But he’s in no mood to be reasonable; maybe hitting the father-fucker line again was over the top. He howls rage and pain and lets go of my shirt because he needs that hand to hit me with. When he releases me, the only thing holding me up is my grip on his fighting claw; my full weight sags onto the joint, forcing it sideways and out, and it snaps with a dull liquid pop. His howl chokes down into astonished gargling.

I hold on, and for half a second I hang there while he supports me with the broken claw—damn he’s tough—but my weight pulls him off balance, and we both go to the floor. He comes down on top of me, but I still have enough play to bend his arm like a chicken wing; then I can extend my other arm behind his shoulder, grab his wrist and grab my own wrist with my other hand, my forearm levering his elbow up and back. I use the leverage to push his other shoulder into the floor beside us, so he can’t get a swing with his unbroken claw. I straighten my arms a bit to take up the slack, and he grunts with pain, since I’m only about ten foot-pounds shy of ripping every goddamn ligament in his shoulder.

His face is right up against the back of my left shoulder; if he was thinking about hurting me instead of thinking about how much I’m hurting him, he could rip the fuck out of my armpit with his tusks. I draw back my chin so he can get a glimpse of my smile.

“Think about what you’re doing, Orbek,” I say helpfully. “So far, you’ve got a busted claw; that’ll heal. About ten seconds from now I’m gonna break your shoulder, which will chew the shit out of your rotator cuff and fuck you up for life. And if breaking your shoulder doesn’t work, I’ll kill you and start again with somebody else. You want to negotiate, here?”

His flunkies are all gathered round, shouting along with the other prisoners—a couple of them shove Deliann back out of the way—but Orbek’s on top and he’s wide as a house. One of them winds up for a kick, and I grin at him. “Even money says I can take that kick, kill him, and kill you, too, before you get in another. Go ahead, tough guy. Take your shot.”

The ogrillo decides he should wait and see. It warms my heart, how much mileage I can still get out of my reputation. “So, Orbek, no help there. What’s it gonna be?”

Pain-sweat drips off his forehead, and he snarls wordlessly for a couple seconds, then lowers his head by my ear and whispers, “I give, but leave me some face with my boys, hey?”

I give his arm a painful-looking twist, and he snarls again, tossing his head in a pretty good performance of agony. “Think about it,” I repeat loudly. “Ten seconds. Then you die.”

He gets close to my ear again. “You couldna fuckin’ asked?” he whispers.

“This way’s better,” I whisper back. “If they kill me, you’re covered.”

He snarls and writhes and goes through some decent pro-wrestler thrashing. “Yeah, arright,” he whispers, then he hooks one of his tusks into the back of my shoulder joint, just for a second. “But remember. You win this one? You remember I coulda hurtcha. Maybe I be dead, but you be hurt, hey? I want some fuck-me consideration.”

Reminds me of me at his age. “Deal.”

I switch my grip on his arm so that I free up a hand to get a forearm under his chin, take his collar, and lever my wrist against his trachea in a judo choke. His head comes up and his eyes bug out and he gasps, “All right—all right—don’t kill me . . .” all nice and hoarselike as if I really were putting pressure on his throat.

Together we negotiate the complicated process of getting up from the floor while making it look like I’m still hurting him, and together we manage to convince his boys of the dubious proposition that I can kill him before they can haul me off. We end up with me riding his shoulder, one arm around his neck like a choke from behind, one hand still on the broken fighting claw to keep his wounded arm bent in a half-assed hammerlock.

“Caine—” Deliann says again, his eyes asking me if I want him to jump in.

“Stay there,” I tell him cheerfully. “I’m just going for a drink of water. My jackass and me, we’ll be right back.”

As Orbek sets out toward the clot of Serpents and their hangers-on, I tip a wink over my shoulder at Deliann. I’m not sure he sees it; he’s rubbing his face like he’s got a headache.

The water streams out a pipe in the wall and pours into a little round pool with three trenches leading out; the whole Pit floor slopes gently down from there. Everybody will get a good view.

Almost like being onstage.

4

PRISONERS SCOOT BACK out of Orbek’s way, clearing a narrow path of bare floor. “Who’s in charge up there?” I whisper in his ear.

“The guy with the green rag on his head,” he whispers back through a ventriloquist’s grimace. “Calls hisself Adder.”

One of the lesser luminaries in the Serpent constellation stands in our path. “Hey, Orbek, you all right?” he says, thinking he’s being witty. “Don’t that hurt? Musta been real painful when he yanked your claw, huh?”

I give him a hard look over Orbek’s shoulder. “You want to find out?”

He chuckles. “Where you think y’going, cripple?”

“I’m thirsty. I’m going to get a drink.”

The Serpent points back at Orbek’s feet. “Water’s fine right there.”

“Are you kidding? It smells like your mother’s ass.”

This gets a pretty good laugh from the prisoners, and the Serpent’s face goes red. “You got a wise mouth for a cripple, old man,” he sneers. “I wonder, will it still feel that smart when it’s wrapped around my dick?”

“Hey, all I want is a drink. A clean drink, kid. Is that a problem?”

Here it comes: Adder and his lieutenants are into this now, making their way over, grinning. They can’t believe I’m stupid enough to put myself into their hands. “No, no, no, no problem,” the Serpent says broadly. “But we got some rules around here, crip. Everything’s got a price, huh? Right now, going rate for a drink is, you gotta suck me off. Nothing personal. Rules, huh?”

“You think you’re gonna get some off me?” I give a horselaugh. “I’m not a child molester, kid. Come back when you grow up.”

“I’m growin’ plenty right now,” he says, rubbing his pants.

“Aw, for shit’s sake, Dinnie,” Orbek says, thin and hoarse past my elbow around his throat. “Lemme through, hey? He’s fuckin’ killin’ me.”

“Not my problem,” the Serpent answers, but Adder puts a hand on his shoulder from behind.

“No, let them through,” he says, playing Lord of the Manor. “Caine’s a celebrity, Dinnie. We need to bend the rules a little to make him feel welcome.” He offers me a slight, ironic bow and sweeps a hand toward the pool of clear water. “And you are welcome, Caine. Please, be my guest.”

“Hey, thanks. You’re a prince,” I tell him as Orbek lumbers past. “You want to make me feel really welcome? Keep this shit-eating Limp Dick off me once I get down.”

“Orbek takes my orders,” Adder says, “and he won’t bother you if I tell him not to. Right, Orbek?”

“Like you say, Adder,” the ogrillo wheezes.

“There, you see? You’re perfectly safe here, Caine. I’m only sorry you weren’t properly announced; we would have put out the good silver.”

Christ, everybody’s a comic. “Yeah, whatever. One knee, jackass.” I enforce the order with what looks like an agonizing yank of the claw, and Orbek groans as he kneels. I slide off his back and he rises over me, snarling.

“Bastard,” he says. “Fuck your father!” He draws back his big clawed foot to bust some of my ribs, but Adder stops him with a sharp word. Wonder what he would have done if Adder had told him to go ahead. Killed me, probably.

Guess I’ll never know.

Orbek backs off, cradling his wounded arm and grumbling obscenities under his breath. Adder leans over me, just out of arm’s reach, hands on his knees. “You understand, don’t you, Caine, that I can only bend the rules so far? Sure, I let you in here. But I am gonna have to get over on you.” He gives me a winning smile of shit-colored teeth. “Hope you don’t mind.”

“I don’t give a handful of snot what you do, so long as I get some water.”

“First things first,” he says, his hands going to the waistband of his pants.

“What, you afraid I won’t put out? What am I gonna do, run away?” I roll myself over so I can get a taste of the water. It’s good: cool, sparkling clear, with the high mineral content that comes of filtering through a hundred feet or so of limestone. I take a nice, long, satisfying draft.

The general quiet in the Pit drops to stone silence.

“You know, Caine,” Adder says, grinning like a friendly alligator, “I think in the mouth isn’t enough. Not for you. I think I’m gonna have to do you. Do your ass. That’s like a, a, y’know, a surcharge, y’know? For taking the drink on credit.”

“What is it with you guys?” I ask him. “This whole butt-raping thing, I don’t get it. I mean, I don’t have any quarrel with rump-humpers—whatever sharpens your sword, you know what I mean?—but what is it about nutballs like you that makes you want to fuck a straight? I mean, I don’t go around raping dykes, do I? Where’s the fun in that?”

He straightens, still grinning, and starts to unlace his pants. “Maybe it’s an acquired taste,” he says.

“Berne was like that,” I say slowly. “You’ve heard of Berne? I never could figure out why. I was gonna ask him—” I push myself up onto my hands and show him my teeth. “—but he died.”

Adder mirrors my look. “Then I guess you’re lucky to have me around to satisfy your curiosity.”

Some guys just can’t take a fucking hint.

“Yeah, all right, I’ve heard enough.” I pull myself onto the stone bench at the foot of the wall next to where the pipe comes out. It takes a little maneuvering to get turned around so I can look out over the Pit.

Everybody’s on their feet now, almost breathless in anticipation—watching Adder get ready to rape me is probably the best entertainment they’ve had in weeks. Even the guards line up along the catwalks, grinning and nudging each other. Some of them probably can remember the last time I was here, and they don’t like me any more than the Serpents do. I can see Deliann, not too far away, at the fringes of the Serpents who surround me. He looks worried, but he’s holding it together and keeping his mouth shut. A few shoulders away stands t’Passe and her crowd of buttlickers.

I take a deep breath and shout, “All right, asswipes! Shut up and listen!”

Like I don’t have their complete attention already . . .

“People’ve been telling me how things work down here—telling me the rules.” I roll my eyes at Adder, inviting him to laugh along with me. “You know what? Your rules suck.”

He starts to say something, but I hold up my hand and keep talking. “I’ve got some new rules. My rules.”

I fold down all but my first finger. “Rule One: Fuck with me, you die. No warnings. No second chances.”

This causes an astonished rumble to boil up from the mass of prisoners. Adder can only stare at me like I’ve gone bugnuts.

I pop the next finger. “Rule Two: What I say, goes. It comes out of my mouth, it’s law. Break a law, you get hurt. Break it again, you die.”

Adder snorts contemptuously. “Done yet? Anything else?”

“One more,” I tell him with a shrug. “Rule Three: Fuck with my friends, it’s the same as fucking with me. When in doubt, see Rule One. So—” I lift one hand up above my head and waggle it. “How many of you want to be my friends?”

Adder gives another one of those snorts. Sounds like he’s got a turd up his nose.

“C’mon, don’t be shy,” I call. “Let’s see some hands.”

The Serpents are holding down the crowd with hard looks. They don’t even have to go as far as make a threatening gesture; a simple shift of weight, a coolness in their eyes, makes it goddamn clear what they plan for anybody stupid enough to take my side.

Somewhere in the middle of the Pit, a hand goes up.

Prisoners step away from him.

“You’re dead, you stupid shit,” Adder says. “You hear me?”

In the middle of a clear space of Pit floor stands Deliann, his hand high. “I would like to be your friend, Caine. I hope I already am.”

Well.

I guess that cold courage doesn’t wear off.

Adder says, “Put your hand down, dead man.”

“Hey, mind your manners, shitbrain.”

“What?” Adder looks down at me. “What did you just say to me?”

“I told you to mind your fucking manners. What d’you think I said?”

Out in the clear space, t’Passe joins Deliann, and silently puts up her hand. Now one of her followers goes out there, and another, and another.

“I thought—” Adder says, “I thought I heard you say, ‘Adder, tell your boys to kill every one of those dumb cocksuckers.’ That’s what I thought I heard you say.”

I shake my head sadly. “If I were you, I’d be thinking pretty seriously about hiking my stupid butt-raping ass out there and raising my own damn hand.”

“And why would I want to do that?”

“Because if you don’t,” I tell him, “I’m gonna fuck you up.”

Adder rotates his shoulders, loosening himself up like a boxer between rounds. “Bold words from a crippled old man.”

“Think it over, Adder. It’s kinda humiliating. Ask Orbek.”

“Worse than being gang-raped in the ass?”

I roll my head around and sneer at him with scalding contempt. “You got a move to make, shitbrain? Bring it on.”

He squints at me. “Man, you are asking for it—”

“I’m begging for it. C’mon, what are you, afraid of me? Shit, what a puss.”

“Fuck it,” he says, and lunges at me. He starts to grab for my shirt, then stops himself—he saw what happened to Orbek, and he’s not that stupid—and he settles for a hard kick that thumps one of my legs where it hangs over the lip of the bench.

“Yeah, that’d hurt—if I wasn’t crippled, dumbshit. I can’t even feel it.” I give him a better horselaugh than the one I used on Dinnie. “How’d a moron like you end up in charge around here, anyway?”

“Feel this,” he snarls, and grabs one of my ankles, yanking me off the bench. I slap the stone floor in a stinging breakfall. He twists me over facedown, and I let my arms swing high to open my ribs for his kick. The idiot goes for it: his shoe crashes in, but I’m ready for it and I absorb the blow with a muay Thai hiss. I wrap his foot with my arm, locking his toes into my armpit. With my other arm I push into a roll toward him; he lets out a startled shout as my leverage on his ankle forces him to the ground.

It takes me a lot less time to adjust my hold than it does for him to adjust to being thrown; before he knows what’s going on I’ve got his ankle and heel in a jujitsu lock that makes him howl.

“You win!” he shrieks. Not so tough after all. “You win!”

“Fucking right I win.” I bear down on the lock until his ankle shatters with a crunch like somebody stepped on a wet pile of broken glass. “I always win.”

He screams: a rabbit in the jaws of a wolf. I pull myself up his leg and punch him in the balls.

This chops off his scream and sits him up, gasping; I whip my right arm around his neck into a forward headlock, brace my left hand against his shoulder, and grab my own wrist in a figure-four. He flails at me, raining punches at random up and down my ribs and legs, but he can’t get any weight behind them; the only place he can hit me hard enough to hurt is my crotch, and there’s no feeling in my balls anyway.

The gassy thing about the figure-four headlock is that it leverages both of my triceps—two-thirds of the total muscle in each arm—and a fair amount of pectoral and lat into the lock, and it twists his head so that the only muscles he can use to resist are those on one side of his neck. From the inside, it’s a losing proposition. Even though I’m weak as a kitten with this chemical pneumonia or whatever, he doesn’t have a chance. I apply a little pressure, and he squeaks when he feels his cervical vertebrae start to separate.

“That’s it, calm down,” I tell him gently. “Fight’s over, bubba. You lose.” The other Serpents are closing in around us, uncertain exactly how to go about hurting me. “Tell your bitches to back off, Adder. Before I break your neck.”

I give him some slack in the headlock, and he gasps through his clamped teeth, “Back off—back off! For shit’s sake, do what he says!”

They press away some. “More,” I tell them. “Keep going. Little more, that’s it, go on.” I chivvy them back until we’ve got a sizable open space in front of us—I want to make sure everybody sees this.

Now, the catechism.

“All right, Adder,” I say. “Who’s in charge here?”

“Motherfuck—” he starts, but a twitch of my arms cuts him off.

“Let’s try that again, huh? Who’s in charge here?”

“You are,” he growls.

“Very good. Who makes the rules in the Pit?”

“You do.”

“Hey, two for two,” I tell him encouragingly. “You’re doing great. Now, here’s the gristle. I hope you were paying attention. What’s Rule One?”

“Uh,” he begins, and then I kill him.

He keeps talking while he dies, sort of: the only sound he can make is a wet kh kh kh noise—reminds me of Garrette—because a sharp push of my arms broke his neck, which used his cervical vertebrae to scissor through his spinal cord, which makes him lie there like a marionette with his strings cut while the light goes out of his eyes.

A shove rolls his corpse off me, and I haul myself back up onto the cut-stone bench. I look out on the silent mass of prisoners.

“Any fucking questions?”

And those couple hundred Serpents gathered around me slowly realize that they’re trapped in a stone room with over a thousand people who have their hands in the air and who don’t like any of them one little bit, and I watch them each and severally decide—given Rule Three—that maybe they want to be friends of mine, too.

5

FOR A TIME, Deliann contemplated.

He could not have said how long this time might have been; the waves of fever that washed over and through him compressed and expanded time unpredictably. He might think for an hour, and find only seconds had passed; some hours did pass during which he could only shiver and sweat, his mind a nightmare jumble.

As soon as the guards who removed Adder’s corpse had trudged back up and the stairs had lifted behind them, Deliann had gone to this strange man who had once been his friend. “I want to help.”

Hari gave him a long, darkly measuring stare. “You used to get a little squeamish. This is gonna be ugly for a day or two.”

“I’m still squeamish. But it won’t stop me.”

Hari nodded, remembering. “I guess it never did.”

“No,” Deliann had said. He’d felt an icy, tingling non-pain, as though someone had slid a thin, very sharp knife between his ribs. “I guess it didn’t.”

Hari hadn’t needed his help to pacify the Pit; between the Serpents on one side and t’Passe’s Cainists on the other, order came to the prisoners whether they liked it or not. “It is better to be feared than loved,” he observed to Deliann once, in an abstracted undertone, “for men love at their own inclination, but you can make them fear at yours.”

This was shortly after the death of Adder. Deliann knelt over Hari’s legs, scrubbing dead flesh from his sores with a wad of coarse burlap. If Hari could feel even discomfort from this rough treatment, he gave no sign. “I’ve read The Prince,” Deliann had replied in a matching mutter. “I seem to recall that Machiavelli goes on to point out that best of all is to be feared and loved.”

Hari flashed him a dark grin. “Yeah, that’s the trick, huh? Nice work if you can get it.” He shrugged dismissively. “Maybe I better stick to what I’m good at.”

“Love isn’t so hard, Hari.”

The grin faded, and his eyes went hooded. “Maybe for you.”

“It’s a connection, that’s all. It’s a recognition of the connection that’s already there.” Deliann shook his head. Fever was scattering his meaning. “Show them the connection, that’s all. Let them know it works both ways.”

Hari scowled. “Yeah, all right, Confucius. Gimme a fucking hint, huh?”

Deliann cast a significant glance toward Orbek, who sulked on the wall-bench a quarter of the way around the Pit. “He’s been taking abuse all day for the way he let you manhandle him. The right word could get him—and the whole ogrillo faction—solidly behind you.”

Hari nodded thoughtfully. “Worth a try.”

After Deliann finished tying bandages of more burlap over the sores, Hari called a couple Serpents to carry him out into the middle of the Pit, then summoned Orbek. “That was a shitty thing I said about your father, and your clan,” he said gravely. “I shouldn’t have done that, and I’m sorry for it.”

Astonishment prevented the ogrillo’s reply.

“You were ready to fight and die for your father’s honor,” he went on. “I respect that; I respect you for that. You are a true Black Knife, Orbek. Your clan should be proud.”

He raised his voice and spoke to the entire Pit. “None of you know that when we were fighting, Orbek could have ripped me a new mouth or two with his tusks. The only reason he didn’t was that I made him a deal. I didn’t beat him, I bribed him.” He held out his hand. “I’d like to claim you as my friend, Orbek.”

“Rule Three, hey?” Orbek said with a smirk around his tusks, but he took Hari’s hand. And for a moment, he seemed curiously reluctant to let it go. The ogrillo said, “You, uh, you maybe should have somebody regular to help you get around. Somebody you can trust.”

Hari squinted up at him. “You offering?”

Orbek shrugged.

“You want the job, it’s yours.”

Orbek gravely swung Hari up onto his back and carried him back to where Deliann sat on the bench. Hari had looked down at Deliann and said softly, “You are one smart son of a bitch.”

Over the hours or days that followed, Hari had seemed to be everywhere all the time; Deliann didn’t know if he ever slept. Orbek carried him wherever he went—he insisted upon it, and that insistence somehow transformed his earlier humiliation into a badge of honor.

The prisoners in general seemed to be actively grateful to have someone telling them what to do. The rare moments of resistance to Hari’s rule came mainly from the Cainists themselves. As t’Passe never tired of explaining, “Cainism is not a religion, it is a philosophical stance. Your personal significance is purely symbolic; we’ve appropriated your iconography—the Prince of Chaos, the Enemy of God—from the Church of the Beloved Children, as our symbol of resistance to everything that Ma’elKoth stands for.”

“If anybody’d asked me,” Hari had said to her, “I would have told them to leave my iconography the fuck alone.”

“You are free to disapprove,” she’d replied. “Your disapproval means only as much to me as I choose to allow it to mean. I am free to resist your will.”

“Sure.” Hari nodded at her, smiling. “I respect your right to resist. You should respect my right to break your legs for it.”

“Perhaps respect is the fundamental issue,” t’Passe had answered agreeably.

Hari spent most of his time training his army.

He had selected a cadre of the strongest, most aggressive of the Serpents, liberally intermixed with ogrilloi and primals. In exchange for the authority to use force in the Pit, they were charged with the responsibility for maintaining order. They also received organized training in unarmed combat, with t’Passe as a demonstrator. This was a strong drawing point for many of the younger and more impressionable prisoners: the opportunity to learn some of the subtleties of infighting from Caine himself.

The guards, of course, would not have allowed such training if they had understood what was taking place, but the combat practice was carefully stylized so that it looked like a dancing game, conducted in the midst of a ring of prisoners who would sing and clap to keep time. Hari confided to Deliann that he had hooked this idea from an Earth fighting style developed by slaves in Brazil, disguised as dance so that they could practice under the eyes of their Portuguese masters.

The distribution of food had become strictly regimented. Now, when the woven baskets were lowered, a single prisoner stood to receive each, and portions were carefully doled out to an orderly line of prisoners, one at a time. A sort of economy had sprung up, with the primary media of exchange being food and sexual favors. All were allowed to make any trades they could—his “soldiers” only ensured that all deals were ruthlessly enforced. Extortion or coercion of any kind was swiftly—and unerringly—punished. No innocent was ever wronged by Caine’s justice in the Pit; his judicial system was the only one in the history of two worlds in which innocence was an absolute defense.

The sole judge of truth or lie in the Pit was Deliann’s flash.

Something in his fever had made his flash more frequent. Now, he had only to stare at an individual long enough, and eventually his flash would come; he saw not only the facts of each case, but the character of the claimants. Disputes of any kind became rare, and the Pit’s ad hoc police force—despite the criminal propensities of most of its members—became absolutely incorruptible, after an incident of minor extortion by one of Hari’s soldiers was punished by a spectacularly brutal execution.

The Pit was quiet now, as well. When there was no training, conversations could be carried on in a normal tone of voice, instead of the half shouts that had always been required before. The guards overhead had not known what to make of this sudden change; Hari had forbidden his subjects to reply to the guardsmen’s taunts and crude insults. He’d directed them to obey any direct order and answer respectfully any direct query, but they were otherwise to ignore all the guards said and did.

He’d made himself a seat, a roughly padded throne on the bench ledge beside the spillpipe. From there his miniature Peaceable Kingdom spread before him: lions and lambs both too respectful of his uncompromising ruthlessness to even complain, let alone start trouble.

The arc of water channel to his left had now become the Pit’s sole sewer. After one killing and several severe beatings, no one dared relieve themselves in either of the other two. The center channel carried the Pit’s bathwater, and each prisoner bathed and washed clothing in that water; even lacking soap, by the end of the first bathing rotation the animal stench in the Pit had faded to a faint and not-unpleasant musk. The channel that curved to the right—scrubbed with rags made of prisoners’ shirts, all the way from the pool to the drain on the far side of the Pit floor—carried the drinking water, now clean and clear as the stream that sparkled from the spillpipe.

Whenever he was not called upon to be a judge or legal oracle, Deliann passed the span sitting on the Pit floor with his aching legs folded beneath him, living in mindview, studying the swirls of black Flow that enwrapped Hari’s shadowy Shell, watching his fever make the stone walls ripple in slow, deep swells like the open ocean.

He spent a lot of time thinking about black Flow. He spent a lot of time thinking about the interplay of chance and will that is misnamed destiny.

He spent a lot of time thinking about Caine.

Twice he tried to tell Hari what he had discovered, but circumstances were against him. Hari was caught up in conquering and administering his tiny demesne; Deliann was able to capture his attention for only moments at a time, and often a surge of fever would half scramble what he was trying to say.

“Your Shell,” he’d begun, the first time. “You know what a Shell is?”

“Yeah,” Hari had confirmed distractedly. “I was married to a thaumaturge.”

“Yours is black. Someone must have told you yours is black.”

“So?”

“It’s all about Flow. Stone—this stone, Donjon stone—doesn’t stop black Flow. Nothing does, I think.”

“The point, Kris. Let’s have it.”

“Your Shell, it’s black because of this kind of Flow, don’t you understand? You can’t stop it.”

“It’s not that big a deal. Lots of people have black in their Shells.”

“Everyone has black in their Shells. Everyone. But usually you can’t see it for all the other colors. But a Shell that’s solid black? It’s rare. Rare. I can’t tell you how rare that is. The last one, I think—last I know of—might have been Jereth of Tyrnall.”

“Ancient history,” Hari had muttered. “He’s not much more than a myth.”

“Not ancient. Not. Just history. Only ancient for humans. Hari, the Covenant of Pirichanthe—that ended Jereth’s Revolt—that was only five hundred years ago. I know people who were there. My father—I mean, the King—T’farrell Ravenlock, he was there, as Witness for the First Folk. Jereth Godslaughterer was as real as you are. Most of what you know of him—most of what the songs and stories tell—is more true than it is false.”

“What’s it got to do with me?”

“Same energy: you decide, and then you do. That’s what made Jereth the Godslaughterer, and that’s what makes you Caine.”

“You better lie down for a while, huh? You’re not making a whole lot of sense.”

“Your power is my power: everyone’s power. We all have power; we just don’t use it. Black Flow, don’t you see? It’s mostly a metaphor. Like throwing a punch. Focus. Directed energy. Concentration. No fear. The release of desire. Presence. That’s who Caine is.”

“I don’t follow.”

Deliann had laced his fingers together in front of his knee and leaned back against the wall of sweating stone. Some of his fever had seemed to drain into the cool stone, and when he had continued, he’d felt a bit more lucid. “Every once in a while,” he’d said slowly, “I think about some of the things you taught me, back at the Conservatory. I remember the time you dressed me up in Sorbathane armor so you could demonstrate a real punch. It’s been twenty-seven years, Hari. I’ve done a lot of fighting—I’ve been punched by an ogre—and no one, no one, has ever hit me that hard.”

“Power doesn’t have that much to do with strength,” Hari had said. “A good punch is half physics and half attitude.”

“So is black Flow. Anyone can use it, just like anyone with arms can throw a punch. You’re better at it, that’s all. You strip away the nonessentials. How hard can you hit if you worry about breaking your hand? How well can you fight if you worry about losing?”

Hari murmured, “ ‘Do not be concerned with escaping safely—lay your life before him.’ ” He flattened his mouth into a grim line. “Bruce Lee.”

“A philosopher?”

“Yeah.” The grim line stretched a little. “He died young.”

Deliann had shrugged. “Caine didn’t.”

Hari had looked away. “Don’t talk to me about Caine,” he had said. “Trying to be Caine—that’s how I ended up here.”

“No, no, no. You ended up here because you were trying to not be Caine.”

Which was entirely the wrong thing to say; Deliann could see it now, too late. Bringing up Caine had battle-axed the conversation. Hari had told Orbek to carry him to a pair of Serpents whose voices were inching upward toward a quarrel, and had curtly suggested to Deliann that they should talk about this some other time, when he was feeling better.

His second try, some indeterminate hours or days later, had produced only slightly better results. He had led into it more carefully, this time; once or twice, he’d sat down and talked with Hari at some length, without ever mentioning any of this. They had spoken of the lives they had lived since they had parted at the Conservatory, twenty-seven years ago.

Hari had only briefly sketched some of Caine’s adventures, since Deliann knew already the broad outlines of many of these; mostly, he spoke of his wife and his daughter, of his father and of the home that had been taken from them. Deliann had more to tell: from his earliest days on Overworld, when he’d very nearly starved before landing his job as a bouncer at Kierendal’s Exotic Love, to meeting Torronell and his Adoption; from his life at the Living Palace and the surrounding lands as the Changeling Prince—the Fist of the Twilight King—to his disastrous journey on the trail of the vanished legation to Transdeia. He had told Hari of Tommie, and was obscurely warmed as well as saddened to learn that Hari remembered Tommie well, with respect and some affection.

“Tommie died a Cainist?” Hari had said softly, shaking his head. “Hard to believe. He was always so, well, so normal, you know? Practical.”

“T’Passe would tell you that being practical is the essence of Cainism.”

“Can we not start that shit?”

“Tommie was not an ordinary man. He may have been, at one time; but the man who saved me was wholly extraordinary. I can’t really say what made him so special. Cainism might be as good a name for it as any.”

“Names,” Hari had grunted. “What’s that line Orbek likes? You can call a turd a sandwich, but it still tastes like shit.”

“You think there is no power in names, Hari? Tommie wouldn’t agree. Tommie gave me a name. One that’s too powerful for me. I can’t make myself use it, though it seems to be mine.”

“What kind of name is that?”

Deliann had had to look away, to conceal the tears swelling into his eyes. “He named me as the Mithondionne. What humans would call the king of the elves.”

“No shit?”

Deliann had shrugged helplessly. “Torronell brought HRVP back to the Living Palace. My family is dead. Though Adopted, I am Mithondionne.” He had lowered his head and swallowed. “The last of my line.”

Hari had been silent for a long, long time. Finally Deliann had looked back at him, and had been astonished to see stark new pain in Hari’s black eyes. “Christ, Kris,” he’d said softly. “I’m sorry. I—” He’d shaken his head, scowling, disgusted with himself, and had looked down at his hands. “I forget, you know? I get so trapped in the wreckage of my own life that I forget other people got destroyed, too. I am such an asshole, sometimes.”

Deliann had smiled gently. “That’s a name, as well.”

“Kris—”

“You have to admit that some names have power, Hari. You must see that.”

“Yeah, all right, whatever. Is this important?”

“It’s extremely important. It’s incredibly important. There is nothing more important. Think about this. Think about the names you use. Think about the names others use for you. They call you the Blade of Tyshalle, Hari. Do you ever think about that?”

“They call Caine the Blade of Tyshalle.”

Deliann had waved this aside; he had no interest in arguing the distinction. “Tyshalle Deathgod is also called the Limiter, and the Divider. Tyshalle himself is the energy of change; he is the outer darkness beyond the edges of organized reality. That’s why he’s the God of Death: death is the primary change. The big one. Change is, itself, the structure of experience. Think about it: The absence of change is stasis—which is also the absence of experience. Experience is reality. That’s what reality is to us; no more, no less. That’s why you get the quantum observer effect. Reality is change. That’s all it is. The Blade of Tyshalle is the leading edge of reality. It’s the knife that cuts everything.”

“The Blade of Tyshalle,” Hari had answered heavily, “is a goddamn marketing gimmick. Some Studio flack thought it sounded cool, that’s all. It’s a good hook for an assassin. It doesn’t mean anything; they just made it up.”

“Shiva’s Dance,” Deliann had said, conjuring another name. He’d felt his line of reasoning slipping through his fingers as more and more connections tied themselves within his brain. “Your mother was Hindu, wasn’t she?”

“Bengali.”

“And your name: Hari. An alias for Vishnu, right? Did she ever talk about any of the other old gods?”

“Maybe some,” Hari had said warily. “She died when I was, what, eight? I’m not sure I’d remember.”

“Did she ever talk about Shiva?”

“The Destroyer. You don’t have to be Hindu to know who Shiva was.”

“Is,” Deliann had corrected. “Is in the sense that the force for which Shiva was a metaphor is entirely real, and still with us. Shiva is power in its purest sense. Absolute motion. Destruction, creation: the same energy informs both. Destructive creation, creative destruction. This isn’t a paradox. It isn’t. It’s a breakdown of language. Destruction and creation are not opposites. They are both opposites of stasis.”

He had started to talk faster and faster, trying to get all the words out; his chain of logic smoked under his acid fever. “The old name—the best name—is Shiva: the Dancer on the Void. The power that shatters order into primordial chaos is the same power that patterns chaos into a new structure of order—because pure chaos is also a kind of stasis, don’t you see? Shiva is the enemy of everything that does not change. Shiva’s Dance is the play of energy in the cosmos; it’s not good, it’s not evil, it simply is. It’s change itself, and it touches everything. Power. Life. Mind.”

Hari had squinted. “Life?”

“Power and Life are the same thing. Both of them together are Mind. Mind is a patterning of energy, nothing more, nothing less. The elemental particles that make up this stone, right here—” He had rapped his knuckles on the bench above the spillpipe. “—electrons, the quarks that build the protons and the neutrons, are exactly that: patterns of energy. The same energy, Hari. At its most fundamental level, energy is energy. That’s why, say, a stonebender rockmagus can shape this stone with her bare hands—she’s trained her mind to resonate harmonically with the inherent Mind of the rock. Stonebenders have a saying: ‘When you work the rock, the rock also works you.’ ”

“You’re saying everything has a mind.”

“No: I’m saying everything is Mind.”

“Metaphysics,” Hari had said, waving a hand disgustedly. “A guy name of Pirsig once wrote that ‘Metaphysics is a restaurant with a thirty-thousand-page menu—and no food.’ ”

Deliann had responded with a faintly whimsical smile. “Chew on this, then. I think the same elemental force of change that an ancient Hindu would have named Shiva is what I’ve been calling black Flow. It’s what a Lipkan priest would call the Breath of Tyshalle. It’s the power behind his Blade.” He’d said gently, “That’s you, Hari.”

“You think so?”

“They say that destruction follows Caine the way crows follow an army.”

“Yeah, yeah. You know why they say that?”

“Because it’s true.”

“Because another guy from Marketing came up with a good line. I met him once; he told me they had every Actor out of the whole North American system repeat it every time somebody mentioned my name until it caught on. This is all just coincidence, Kris. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Everything is coincidence, Hari. It means whatever you decide it means.”

“Just coincidence,” he’d repeated stubbornly.

“The entire universe is just coincidence, Hari. The existence of these particular planets around these particular stars in this particular galaxy, the appearance of life, the interplay of chance that brought you and me together here, now, having done what we’ve done, and become who we are: coincidence. The universe is a structure of coincidence.”

“I thought you said the universe is a structure of mind.”

“Yes,” he’d said. “Yes, I did.”

And he’d been about to go on and explain why these two statements were not contradictory, but he’d lost Hari again to a sudden scuffle between an ogrillo and two primals, and after that was settled Hari had managed to find business more important than returning to a conversation that hadn’t interested him in the first place. Deliann had gone too far afield with this; it was too abstract. Hari was a nuts-and-guts man. No conversation would hold his attention that wasn’t about something he could bite, or that could bite him.

Now Deliann watched the dancing game, within its shifting ring of hooting, clapping prisoners. He recognized some of what the dancers were learning from his old HTH classes at the Conservatory, and still more from Hari’s own tutorials: the small movements, shifts of weight to alter the point of impact of a blow that cannot be dodged, the sliding footwork that gracefully flanks one’s opponent with deceptive speed, the focus on joint destruction—especially of the elbow and knee—and the use of headlocks for more than just control. These headlocks were for throws, for cracking the skull and breaking the neck.

For killing.

Deliann saw clearly what Hari planned. He had always had good eyes. Maybe that was his only real talent: to see, and understand.

All right, time to get up, he thought. Last chance to save the world.

6

TOA-SYTELL HAD BEGUN to suspect that the whole world had a fever very much like his own.

From the window of his bedchamber, on the ninth floor of the west wing of the Colhari Palace, the soldiers on the walls of Old Town looked like dolls. They seemed to walk with an unnatural, artificial gait as though they were some badly shapeshifted creatures impersonating men.

Across the river, in the splay of ruins that still smoldered where Alientown had once stood, the antisprite netting that draped over the command posts was clearly designed as an arcane code: Toa-Sytell couldn’t read it, but the troops down there were definitely sending some kind of signal. Something to be read by griffins, or dragons passing overhead, or some invisible spirit of the air.

Perhaps the same spirit of the air that had crept in through his nostrils while he slept, and given him this awful fever. How lucky he was to have awakened before the spirit had consumed him entirely!—though he knew the spirit still lurked about, just out of the corners of his vision, slipping into shadows behind his bedcurtains before he could quite make out its shape.

He could defeat it easily: it only had power when he slept.

So he did not sleep.

Behind him, the Eye of God droned on with his interminable report. Exactly as the Patriarch had predicted, Caine had crushed every threat against him—and had finally given Toa-Sytell the proof he required.

Far, far below, figures moved among the troop tents pitched on what once had been the streets of Alientown. One of them was Toa-M’Jest himself. That one, in the scarlet doublet. Or was he the one in the dark cape? Perhaps he was the slimmer, smaller man nearby; as the Patriarch watched, that tiny figure called others to him. They gathered in a knot and whispered together, thinking that they could conceal their treason from him with lowered voices. They didn’t know how much he could hear.

He could hear everything.

All across the city—across the Empire—his subjects whispered against him. They all thought he didn’t know. They all thought they were safe. “Arrest him.”

“Your Radiance?”

“Toa-M’Jest. The Duke of Public Order. Draft a warrant. He is hereby relieved of his duties and placed under arrest.”

“Your Radiance?” the officer repeated blankly. “On what charge?”

“It doesn’t matter. Conspiracy with the Enemies of Humanity.”

“But, but, Your Radiance—he’s prosecuting the Caverns War with great success against the subs—”

“That’s part of his plan.” Toa-Sytell sighed, exasperated. How could this man have risen to his rank in the Eyes of God, when he was so thick he could not comprehend the plain truth? “He does not conspire with the elves and the dwarfs and the ogrilloi. He conspires with Caine.”

“I, er, with Your Radiance’s pardon, I find that difficult to accept,” the officer said. “The Duke had Caine put in the Pit.”

Toa-Sytell slicked back his thinning hair with the sweat from his palms. “That’s exactly where Caine wanted to be, don’t you understand?”

“No, Holiness. I don’t.”

Toa-Sytell waved an irritable hand. He could not be troubled to explain the bleedingly obvious.

The officer ventured, “I’m certain the Duke is loyal, Holiness.”

Toa-Sytell turned from the window. His eyes burned, but they were so scratchy that blinking hurt. So he no longer blinked.

The Eye of God looked distinctly uncomfortable.

“Are you?” Toa-Sytell asked. “Certain?”

“I . . . I believe . . .”

“Do you?”

The Eye of God swallowed and did not answer.

“Arrest the Duke,” Toa-Sytell said, and this time the officer did not argue.

“The, ah,” the officer said hesitantly, “the official charge, Your Radiance?”

Toa-Sytell shrugged. “Cainism, I suppose.”

Far, far below, the river itself seemed to writhe and boil, as though it had a fever, too.

The officer turned to leave. Toa-Sytell extended a hand. “No, wait. Not yet. We don’t know yet what Toa-M’Jest is planning. Watch him. Discover his confederates. Just watch them all, and be ready. When he makes his move, take him.”

The officer nodded, clearly relieved. “Yes, Your Radiance.”

“But Caine . . .” the Patriarch said. “Caine. He is one traitor we know already. Our coddling of the Enemy of God is at an end.”

His teeth showed yellow and savage, and his stare was filled with blood.

“Put him in the Shaft.”

7

I DON’T EVEN see Deliann coming until he stumbles and almost goes down. One of the prisoners nearby catches him and tries to steady him on his feet, but Deliann shoves the guy off and keeps moving. “Orbek,” I say quietly. “Get up close on him. He looks like he needs some help.”

That’s massively understated: he looks like he needs a couple weeks in a hospital with an IV-drip of broad-spectrum antibiotics. He manages to stagger along one of the walkways the boys keep clear, and he stops in front of me, swaying. “I know what you’re doing,” he says.

I give Orbek a look, and he nods. He pushes himself to his feet and works his way around behind Deliann, to where he might be able to catch him if the poor bastard collapses. If Deliann sees him move, he doesn’t show it.

He’s so shiny with sweat that his skin looks like wet porcelain, and his eyes are red-rimmed pools of bruise. His hand shakes when he goes to slick back his hair, and he says, “You’re teaching them to kill Donjon guards.”

“You think you could say that a little fucking louder?” I ask him. “For shit’s sake, Kris.”

“I’ve seen it before,” he insists drunkenly. “You angle in under the club; you take the middle of the club on your shoulder instead of the end of the club on your head. Break his arm, because chainmail doesn’t have any joint support. I’ve seen it. I know what you’re doing.”

“Kris, man, sit down.” I pat the stone ledge beside me. “Come on. Sit down before you fall down.”

He shakes his head. “No. No, this is hard enough. Standing up helps me think.” He clenches his teeth, and makes a fist, and says tightly, “This is a mistake. What you’re doing is all wrong. It’s all backward.”

“I don’t need your approval,” I remind him.

“It’s wrong—”

“My whole life has been somebody’s entertainment,” I say through my teeth. “My death won’t be. Neither will theirs.”

He flinches like he’s too close to a fire that scorches his face. “Hari—but—”

“No. We’re gonna make them earn it. When those bastards come for us, they are gonna get the surprise of their fucking lives.”

Orbek folds his arms so that his splinted fighting claw rests in the crook of his other elbow, and I can read stolid approval in his yellow eyes. We splinted his broken claw in full extension. It must hurt like hell, but he’ll be able to fight. He doesn’t follow the entertainment crap, but the rest makes perfect sense to him: May you die fighting is how ogrilloi wish each other luck.

“No no no,” Deliann insists. He squeezes his eyes shut like he’s afraid they’ll pop out of his head, and speaks very slowly and clearly. “You’re preparing to lose, don’t you understand? You’re preparing to lose. All this?” He waves a hand over his shoulder, eyes still shut, indicating the whole Pit and my fighters and dismissing them all at the same time. “All you’re doing is practicing dying.”

“Maybe I need the practice,” I tell him. “I haven’t had a lot of luck with it so far.”

Orbek snickers—that’s his kind of line—but Deliann’s concentrating too hard on what he’s trying to say even to acknowledge it. “Ask t’Passe,” he says. “My will or I won’t: you’ve got the I won’t, but you’re leaving out the my will. Half right is all wrong, Hari.”

From where I sit, I’ve got a clear view of the wide bronze-bound door on the balcony that seals the stairshaft down from the Courthouse. The door swings open; armored men file through from above. They carry crossbows at full cock, and they start to fan out around the balcony. They’re looking at me.

I guess half right is all I’m gonna have time for.

“Should’ve had this talk yesterday, Kris.” I meet Orbek’s grim stare. “You ready for this?”

Orbek shows me his fighting claws. “Born ready, boss.”

“Go get t’Passe.”

He nods, and when he swings around to walk away there’s a hard-rubber bounce in his step; he prickles fierce anticipation like an electric charge. Prisoners fall silent as he passes. Everybody starts by looking up at the crossbows; after that, they just look at me.

“What do you want, Hari? What do you want?” Kris says. “Ask for more, Hari. You don’t aim high enough.”

“I live a little closer to the ground, these days.”

The floor detail forms up on the balcony: six full-armored guards bearing only clubs. Nobody with a bow or an edged weapon ever leaves the balcony. The floor detail guys wear plate mail, instead of the chain hauberks the rest of the guards have on. The crossbows the others carry are underpowered, designed specifically for Donjon work; their X-head quarrels won’t penetrate steel.

They made this change after the last time I came through here. I and a dead girl named Talann showed these fuckers what happens when prisoners get their hands on full-powered crossbows.

Deliann weaves close and takes me by the wrist. “What if you could live?”

“Why would I want to?”

Orbek comes back with t’Passe. She looks as grim as I feel.

“It seems early. I thought we had more time,” she says. “I could use another two or three days.”

“Pretty much everybody feels that way on the steps of the gallows, huh?”

She nods.

“When I give the word, mob the floor detail. Three on one or better,” I tell her. “Use your weakest guys—all they have to do is draw a flight of quarrels.”

The guards overhead won’t have to be shy about shooting; that’s why the crossbows are underpowered. Those X-heads won’t punch through armor, but they’ll chop up flesh and bone like an industrial meat grinder. “That’s where I need the extra days,” t’Passe says. “They’re just not ready. If one or two break, the rest might fold as well.”

“Then pick some that won’t break. You know who they are, t’Passe: the ones who don’t want to live long enough to be executed.”

“None of us want to live long enough to be executed, Caine.”

“Yeah, no shit. Don’t even think about jumping in yourself. I need you for floor marshal. Keep people organized once the shit starts flying. Keep them moving up the stairs.” Crossbows take time to reload. I’ve never seen a guy recock and reset a fresh quarrel in under five seconds in perfect conditions; the stress of combat should at least double that time.

The stairbridge is only a gnat’s ass over forty meters long.

“Orbek, you take Dinnie, Fletcher, Arken, and Gropaz—” Two of the youngest, meanest ex-Serpents, and two cheerfully savage ogrilloi. “—and hit the stairs as soon as the bowmen let loose on our mobbers. You are third up the stairs, you hear me? Third. Serpents in front; we can spare Dinnie and Fletcher easier than your boys. We gotta take that winch—if those stairs go back up, the party’s over. You’re topside marshal. Don’t waste time killing the guys on the winch. Just toss ’em over the rail; we’ll take care of them down here.”

“Like you say, boss.”

“T’Passe, we’ll need another screen of mobbers right behind Gropaz; the next flight of quarrels will go toward the winch. After that, it’s hand to hand.”

“Hari, stop,” Deliann says. “Think for a minute—think! You can do better than this.”

Orbek answers for me, through a wide grin around his tusks. “There is nothing better than this.”

The guards on the winch start cranking down the bridge. It drops in arrhythmic clanking jerks. I nod at Orbek. “Get your boys together and get close to the foot of the bridge.”

“Like you say, boss.” He jogs off.

“T’Passe—” Deliann begins, but the empty focus in her eyes stops him. She’s ready to die.

“I’ll stall as long as I can,” I tell her. “Get your mobbers ready, t’Passe. We don’t have much time.”

She nods and starts to turn away, but she changes her mind and gives me a level look, her mouth a hard flat line. “It’s an honor,” she says.

I mirror her. “The honor’s mine.”

She actually cracks a smile, and then she’s gone, moving through the prisoners, taking one and then another by the shoulder and leading them away.

Deliann turns back to me desperately and takes me by the wrist; his hand is blazing hot and slick with sweat. “Hari, you have to aim higher. You have to try for more. Dying is easy! You’ve said it yourself. Since when does Caine take the easy way out?”

The foot of the stairbridge is only a couple of meters from the floor, and I just don’t have time for this shit. I yank my hand away from him and snarl, “Caine is just a character, goddammit. I made him up. He’s fictional. I’m not the Blade of goddamn Tyshalle, I’m just Hari fucking Michaelson. I used to be a pretty good Actor, and now I’m a middle-aged paraplegic with a few minutes to live.”

“If, Hari! What if?”

“What if what?”

“What if everyone’s right about you? What if the stories about you are true? What if you are the Blade of Tyshalle?” Deliann asks. “What if you are the Enemy of God?”

“So? What then? You want me to just shrug and grin? Okay, I’m crippled. Okay, Shanna was butchered. Okay, I had to lie in her smoking blood? Okay, my father’s dead, okay, Faith is gone, and o-fucking-kay, I don’t fucking care? I’m supposed to just get over it?”

“No,” he insists, urgently, shaking his head like he’s rattled his brain loose and he’s trying to roll it back into place. “No no no no no no no! No one gets over anything, don’t you understand? Everything that happens in your life—every single thing—leaves a scar. A permanent scar. You’re not supposed to get over it. To get over something—to erase the mark it left on you—erases part of who you are.”

He leans close and grabs my arm with both hands. He’s shaking with fever; his eyes roll above a twitch in his cheek. “Scars are the key to power,” he says. His breath smells of ace-tone and rotten fruit. “Scars are the map of beauty.”

He’s close enough to kiss me when he whispers: “Each of us is the sum of our scars.”

The floor detail starts marching down the stairs.

I shake off his grip and push him back. “They’re coming. You better dodge out while you still can.”

“What if,” he says, “it’s Hari Michaelson who is the fictional character? What if the middle-aged paraplegic is just a role that Caine plays, so that he can get along on Earth?”

The floor detail leaves the stairbridge behind. They prod prisoners out of the way with their clubs and breast toward me. The floor detail officer has a swagger that I know too well: he’s expecting a fight. He just doesn’t have a fucking clue what kind of fight.

“No more talking, Kris. Dodge out,” I snarl, and enforce my advice with a sharp shove that sends him staggering sideways to collapse on the floor. I have to shut my eyes against the hurt that cascades over his face.

When I open my eyes again, the floor detail is standing in a knot in front of me. Orbek and his boys are ten feet from the foot of the stairbridge. T’Passe stares expectantly at me from a few yards away, her signal hand motionless at chest level, waiting for my nod. The floor detail officer flips up his visor, shakes out a pair of rusty manacles, and says, “We’re getting reports that you’re a potential problem down here.”

Oh. Oh, shit, I get it.

I understand, now.

This isn’t about the Festival of the Assumption; that’s still days away. This is about me. I’m a potential problem, they say, and to tell you the truth, I can’t really argue with them.

Problems from the Pit go into the Shaft.

This is gonna make my life fucking complete.

I look at Deliann.

If, his wounded eyes whisper.

And all around stand people who are ready to die for me—

I hold my arms out and turn my wrists up, and sigh as the floor detail officer locks the manacles around them.

“Yeah, all right, whatever,” I say. “Let’s go.”

8

WITH A GUARD holding each shoulder, their hands jammed hard into my armpits, they haul me up the stairbridge. I can hear my dragging toes slap each step, but I can’t feel them.

The Pit watches me go, echoing with stunned silence. Nobody can believe I’m letting them take me away.

I’ve always been full of surprises.

Up to the balcony: I start talking while everybody can still hear me. “Keep your shit together,” I tell the prisoners. The guards drag me along a catwalk, past the long, long file of men cradling crossbows. “Keep working—keep dancing. Stay alert. All three rules still go.”

I say this generally; to address Orbek or t’Passe directly would mark them for the guards, and they’d end up chained next to me in the Shaft. “When I come back, you all need to be ready to party.”

We stop in front of the Shaft door. The crack beneath it exhales madness and corruption and lunatic screams.

The detail officer picks up a lamp from the lightstand by the door and touches its wick to the standlamp’s flame, and a couple of his men do the same. The officer smirks at me while he unbars the door. “You’re pretty tough, huh?”

I don’t bother to answer.

“Y’know what?” he goes on. “Lotsa guys are pretty tough, up here in the light.”

He swings the door wide. The air that rises from the Shaft is wet and sloppy and so thick it’s like the tongue of a week-dead cow jammed into my mouth. It’s not just old meat and bad air down there; it’s the breath of people who’ve gone so crazy they eat their own shit until their teeth rot.

The Shafters chained to walls on either side squirm and hide their faces against the weak light leaking in from the Pit; farther down the dark throat of the Shaft a few still have enough energy to scream. The walls are beaded with the condensation from their breath: the beads themselves are grey with the filth the Shafters exhale. The step-cut floor slopes down into infinite black, and it’s wet and slick with human waste.

I remember the last time I was here. I remember the people who had lined the Shaft as Talann and I picked our way down the treacherously slippery stairs to the sump, carrying Lamorak on my back. Most of them were too far gone even to beg. They had been reduced to objects, not even animal: mere bundles of shattered nerves and dripping gangrene, whose sole remaining function was to experience the slow shit-slickened slide into death.

Just walking by was as much as I could take—and I was younger then, and a hell of a lot tougher.

Now I don’t walk anymore.

It’s a good thing I don’t have to go down here under my own power. I’m not sure I could make it.

As they drag me in, all I can think about are the festering burns on my legs, and what they’ll look like after a few days of lying in other people’s shit—but when we pass the door there’s a dark notch, just about two fingers wide, on its latch edge.

I remember:

The throwing knife from between my shoulder blades will serve perfectly. I pull it out and feel for the crack of the door, slip the blade within it, and pound it home with the pommel of my fighting knife. It’s just like pennying shut a door in the apartments where I grew up. It won’t stop the guards when they come for us, but it’ll slow them down and give us a little warning—we’ll hear them pry it open.

I lift a hand over a guard’s shoulder and brush that notch with my fingertips as we pass. Seven years soaking up the dank fungal exhalations of the Shaft have darkened it to the same greenish black as the rest of the wood, but that’s the mark that Caine put there.

That I put there.

The detail officer scowls. “What are you grinning at, asshole?”

I turn the grin on him. “Fuck off.”

He whacks me one: a looping overhand right that splits my lip, loosens a couple teeth, and shoots stars down into the black abyss before me. I keep smiling. Smiling hurts, but so what?

It always did.

“When I come back,” I tell him thickly through my smash-numbed lips, “I’m gonna teach you Rule One.”

He snorts. “When you come back, shit,” he says. “You ain’t comin’ back. You’re gonna die down there.”

“All right.” I twist my head far enough around to catch Deliann’s eye, far below. I remember sitting across a table from him in the cafeteria, more than twenty-five years ago. I remember him saying Forget whether you think it’s possible. What do you want? Like the monkey’s paw, he took my answer and gave me more than I asked for.

I give him a nod: my oldest friend. Like him or not, the best friend I ever had.

“All right,” I say again. “If I come back.”

THE PART-TIME GODDESS thought she was dead. She was right.

She was dead right.

But this was a time of unquiet dead, when spirits and corpses walked the earth, separately and together. Among gods, death and rebirth is a natural cycle. When the man who had been a god called upon her spirit, he was sure she would answer.

He was dead sure.

He commanded the power of legions: at his back stood the myriad that he encompassed, and all the billions of the god of dust and ashes, and the power of the goddess herself.

Against them all stood one solitary man, and he said, “No.”

With all their power, the gods could not break him. They could only hope to transform that No into Yes.

They were deadlocked.