That spot on the inside of my lip was getting way too goddamn sore. “Orbek.”
Yes.
“It wasn’t just about me-Smoke Hunters carry the Black Knife clan sign-”
He was my best hope to get inside. After all, you trained him.
“Since you sicced Orbek on the Smoke Hunt, are Hunts up or down?”
Why?
“Just answer.”
Up.
“Nine Knights down-how many were yours? Or sympathizers?”
Four. Where are you going with this?
It was my turn to laugh. It didn’t come out sounding real humorous. “They’re Black Knives, you dumb cunt. You were using him. You think he wasn’t using you? Like you said: I trained him.”
We’re not going to get along until you start telling me what you know.
“Sometimes shit isn’t complicated,” I said. “You just have to be willing to accept the absolute fucking corruption of everybody involved.”
Silence.
Eventually: So where does this leave us?
I shrugged. “Let’s deal.”
Deal how?
“Play Cainist for a minute. Talk about what you want. Not what you told Deliann you’d do. What you really want.”
Why would I do that?
“You ever read Deliann’s book on me?”
I’m not literary.
“He has Ma’elKoth say that the only way to beat me is to keep me running in so many different directions I can’t focus. That to give me a clear view of my enemy is to hand me victory.”
So why would I give you a clear view?
“Because we’re not enemies.”
It warms me to hear you say so.
“Play straight with me and you maybe get something for it. Take the chance, Kier.”
I have trusted you before.
“And the truth of it is you came out pretty good. It’s not my fault shit went bad in the middle.” Which truth might have been stretched around a corner or two, but she let it go.
Slowly, like it hurt her to say: I want the Knights of Khryl and the rest of your vile feral slavers broken like you broke the Black Knives.
I nodded. “And you don’t care what happens to anybody else around here.”
Do any of them care about Folk?
“Some do. Some don’t. That’s not what we’re talking about.”
What are we talking about?
“I can help you. But you have to help me.”
There are limits to what I am willing to do.
“I’m not asking a lot.”
I’m listening.
“I know shit’s about to blow up here; what do we have, a week?”
Less. A revolution is an avalanche. Once you crack the crust, you can only ride it out or let it roll you under.
“Yeah. It’s more than just the grills and your local agents, right?”
Caine, please. However much we may pretend to trust each other, you can’t expect me to give you anything you can take to the Champion.
“Fair enough. But let me play clever little feral for a minute, huh? Your people have something going that’ll trigger a major crackdown on Hell-maybe even a minor massacre-which will make a really swell excuse for the full-scale invasion by, say, several divisions of the Ankhanan Army that Deliann has in concealed positions on the border, because he’s already been talking with the Lipkan Court about the Poor Oppressed Ogrilloi and the Nasty Oppressing Khryllians and how the Ankhanans Have No Territorial Ambitions, and after all Lipke’s still moderately cheesed with the Order for bailing on the Plains War, which means that Deliann can have this place fully invested on maybe two weeks’ notice.” I spread my hands. “How am I doing?”
Two weeks? You forget we have rail now. And steamboats.
“Yeah. I’m still not used to that. I bet the Khryllians aren’t, either.”
We’re counting on it. What price your help?
“Lay off the Smoke Hunt.”
The Whisper ratcheted down tighter. Ask for something else.
“That’s what I want.”
Aren’t you the man who used to say you can’t make a revolution without breaking heads?
“No,” I said. “I’m not. And I didn’t come here for your revolution.”
I thought freedom was a kind of religion with you-
“That’s the Cainists. Don’t confuse gospel with reality.”
What is the reality?
“A lot of people ask me that.”
I want you on my side, Caine. I have gone to considerable trouble-
“My heart’s pumping pisswater for your fucking trouble.”
Frustration twisted the Whisper into a hiss. Why is this so important to you?
I shrugged. “Orbek’s my brother. The Black Knives are my clan.”
Oh, please. Since when?
“I was adopted.”
You are the most preposterous, self-aggrandizing excuse for a-
“I’m serious about this, Kier. Remember what happens to people who hurt my family.”
A whole river of glass bells cascaded off that cliff. Your adopted ogrillo family!
“Kier.”
Glass kept tinkling. What?
“Faith is adopted.”
The river of bells flash-froze in midair.
When she finally spoke, her Whisper was very soft, and very slow, and very, very flat, soothing, the way a cautious trainer might speak to an escaped bear. A big, hungry, angry bear.
Let’s say I agree. Let’s say I change my plans, shift my resources, and take the risk. What do I get?
I stood up. “Exactly what you asked for.”
The discreetly fist-shaped brass knocker on the reinforced door produced no results, but a knuckle-size rock against the shutter of the lone lamplit window on the second floor produced a voice that was clearly female though in no way recognizably feminine. “Don’t do that again. You won’t like it if I have to come down.”
“You’ll like it even less if I have to come up.”
The shutter swung open. The silhouette of a squarish head on squarish shoulders appeared just long enough to deliver a nod and a hand-wave toward a black shoulder-breadth archway three steps down from street level. “I’ve been expecting you. Use the kitchen door.”
The sunken walkway led between the townhouses to the garden alley behind. The garden gate was reinforced as well, but I heard the clack-chank of a heavy bolt being drawn. The gate swung open.
Nobody there. Nobody visible, anyway.
A head-high panel in the kitchen door stood open, spilling pale lamplight into the back garden’s clutter: random weeds dying among rocks, from pea gravel to fragments of boulders the size of chairs. I picked my way through the gloom, nodding thoughtfully at the unavoidable crunch of my footsteps.
The kitchen door swung open. I said to the squarish silhouette, “I thought you quit.”
“I resigned my Exoteric post, for which I was cast forth in disgrace into the outer darkness. Disgrace, as you well know, is often useful to the Esoteric Service.” The silhouette retreated from the doorway. “Come in. I have a chair for you by the stove.”
The kitchen was modest, barely large enough to fit the small coal-fired stove, iron washbasin, and tiny breakfast table with its two leather-upholstered chairs. Another chair, of plain wood, stood near the stove, and it was to this one that she pointed her thick straight cane.