“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
“Now God listens to me!” One ham-size fist struck his barrel chest. “Our god. Black Knife god. She hears my prayer: bring Black Knives back to Our Place. Bring back men’s fear.”
I could feel a black knife of my own twisting in my guts. “You don’t know what you were asking for.”
“I do. Our god is no Ma’elKoth, little brother. She makes her bargains up front. She tells me my life is Hers now, and She spends it how She chooses.”
“She chooses my ass.” I jerked my chin toward the bitch in the corner. “They choose, Orbek. That’s what your father never told you. Black Knives were never kings. They were always slaves. Slaves to the bitches.” He just grinned at me. “I stand with God, little brother. You know nothing.”
“I was there-”
“And I am here.”
“Terggol pettikaar homunn horrillterazz,” the bitch murmured. “Rummattagarr yas burratt net?”
I looked at Orbek. He showed me more tusk. “She says she knows humans are born half-eligible, but she wonders where you lost your balls.”
“Tell her-” I stopped and shook my head, disgusted. “Forget it. I got nothing to say to you, you fucking slag.”
“Hey.” Orbek’s grin dissolved. He pushed himself to his feet. He practically filled the pit. “Watch your mouth with my wife.”
I looked up into my brother’s cold yellow eyes. “She wants you dead, dick-head. I’m on your side.”
“My side is the Black Knife side.”
“I’m trying to save your life.”
“Nobody asked you.”
“All you have to do is tell that guy up there that you’ll submit.” I waved a hand at the gaslit face of the Knight Attendant peering down through the grille. “That’s him. Right up there. Just say it, and I’ll get you out of this.”
Orbek wouldn’t even look up. “Don’t need your help. Don’t want your help.” He took a single step that brought him looming over me. “Nobody asks you to come here. I’m asking you to go.”
I went perfectly still. For a long time I stared up at the red-streaked silhouette of this ogrillo I called brother. I remembered that if not for Orbek, I’d be dead now. I remembered meeting Orbek in the Ankhanan Donjon; I remembered our fight, and the birth of our friendship. I remembered how Orbek had single-handedly won the Donjon riot that had freed us all. I remembered thinking, back when we’d met in the Donjon’s reeking Pit, that Orbek was a lot like I’d been at that age. Now I could only wonder at how wrong I’d been. Had I ever been this young?
No, of course not.
Neither had Orbek.
Slowly, I hoisted himself back to my feet. “Gonna tell me what’s really going on?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Good story, Orbek. Real good. I almost bought it.” I waved at the Knight Attendant above. “Let’s have that ladder, huh?”
I took Orbek’s massive wrist in an ogrillo handclasp and pulled myself close, my mouth a handspan from his ear. “Want to tell me the truth?” I murmured, barely above a whisper. “Dying won’t help your friends in the Smoke Hunt.”
“Don’t touch me!” Orbek yanked out of my grip, and a huge hand slammed the middle of my chest so hard I bounced into the wall. “Never touch me. Never again.”
My head rang. I leaned on the wall, breathing strength back into my legs. “Like that, is it?”
There was sudden anger in his eyes, and revulsion, and naked loathing. Those ham-size fists twitched up by his face. “You think I want to get out of this, little fucker? You think I want to live?”
“Orbek-”
A fist rose, but it didn’t fall on me. It fell on him. On the side of his head. Next to the black-streaked track that led down from his eye.
Ogrilloi cry tears of blood.
“After what I do? Think I want to live? After being bitch to you?”
He hit himself again.
Oh, I thought, blank as cut stone. Oh, I get it. Oh, Christ.
I could still look him in the eye, though. I’m tough enough for that. “You knew who I was. You knew what I did.”
His chin lifted until he was looking at me between his tusks. “Knowing’s one thing. But being with her-being with someone who’s there, who lives through it. .”
He lost the words in a throat-deep snarl. I’ve heard that snarl before. Here in the Boedecken. I heard it from bucks tripping on tangles of their own intestines. I heard it from bitches cradling corpses of their cubs. “Orbek, listen-”
Cables in his neck wrenched his head around. “You never understand my dishonor. You never understand my shame.”
“Orbek-” My eyes burned. My chest felt like I was trying to breathe under a pile of Black Knife dead. “In the Shaft, you told me that now I share the dishonor I put on the Black Knives. That now what honor I win, I share that too.”
His yellow stare was raw with pain and loathing. For me or for himself, I couldn’t tell. “I’m younger then. Younger and stupider. Stupid enough to think you know something about honor.”
And in the end, I’m never quite as tough as I want to be. I found myself looking down at my hands. As usual. “Everybody does shit when they’re young and stupid, Orbek. You just have to fucking live with it.”
“I don’t.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Is for me. You should go home.”
“Or what?”
Lips peeled back around his tusks. “Something could happen to you.”
“It usually does.”
He flicked a glance at Kaiggez. “Ain’t you got a family now?”
“Yeah. And you’re part of it.”
The trusties pried up the grille, and the siege ladder slid down into the pit. I put a hand on a spoke-rung, and a much larger hand fell on my shoulder and turned me around with irresistable strength. “What you think you’re gonna do?”
I answered with a smile that was as friendly and relaxed as I could manage. “Whatever I think I should.”
“Not asking now. Telling. Stay out of this.”
“You might want to take that hand off me, big dog.”
“Listen, little fucker-”
“Last time you jumped me I was crippled.” I showed some teeth to those fierce yellow eyes. “Think it’s gonna work out better for you today?”
“You better-”
“You better do what you’re fucking told.”
He froze.
“You hear me? When Angvasse Khlaylock comes around for her Challenge, you get down on your knees. You’ve been told. Do it.”
“You tell me nothing. I am Black Knife kwatcharr-”
“You’re not shit.”
That powerful hand switched from my shoulder to my chest and pinned me to the wall. Orbek bent over me, tusks inches from my jaw. Behind him, Kaiggez sat up, her eyes catching witchfire highlights. Orbek’s breath smelled like roadkill. “Want to try me, little fucker?”
“You got it backward.” I went completely boneless, letting him support my whole weight; if this went bad, I’d need both legs to kick. “I took your submission in the Donjon, shithead. You’re mine.”
His hairless brows drew together in a rumple of meat.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s right.”
I leaned around him so I could get a good look at the cold calculation growing in Kaiggez’s eyes. I blurred my voice low to keep this from Khryllian ears above. “You getting this, Lady Macbitch? Orbek’s nobody special. He’s sure as fuck not Black Knife kwatcharr.”
I grinned right into his blankly wounded face. “I am.”