And the bladewand’s off.
From the floor I point it at the Tear and call upon my will and all I get is a scorch on my palm from the eggbutt and that hiss of blue static discharge from the tip.
“Caine-”
Now her voice is a half-strangled gurgle. She’s got a sickly smile behind blood on her mouth, and both hands wrapped around the arrow shaft sticking out of her belly. She retches more blood. “Sorry-I’m sorry-”
“Don’t be sorry. Just fucking stop them till I make this thing work, then we can get out of here-”
“Stop them? There are thousands-you made sure they’ll never stop-”
Goddamn right.
I try for my feet, but again my knees buckle, and I catch myself with a hand on the knob of rock that jammed my kidney-
Huh-huh-did you-
Did you see that?
Was that my eyes, or just in my head?
When I touched the rock, there was-
A severed hand-I was-she was-he and me and she-pinned through the spine-staring into the sky, taking the hand of a kneeling man, cut in half and the waterfall’s spray falling into my open, staring eyes, my own face above among the buildings and the blade driving toward my forehead and-
And where my hand is on the rock, the rock isn’t rock. Not anymore. It’s the hilt of a sword.
And where I touch, this hilt sings with the high humming whine of Power. .
I look up at Tizarre. She blinks at me. “What-what’s happening-?”
“What always happens,” I say, because that is what I always say now.
She nods, because she understands. “What happens next? Is there a next?”
“You already know.”
She nods again.
I toss her the bladewand. It hangs eternally in the air. It is in her hand before it ever leaves mine. Before she catches it, she has turned away, though she still faces me and will forever.
“Keep it,” I tell her. “It’s yours. I don’t need it anymore.” I stand, and the Sword cuts free of the rock. It shrieks in my hand.
I hold it poised above the Tear of Panchasell.
Long and straight and heavy, its blade is the color of mirror-polished tungsten. The runes deep-graven from forte to tip are graceful and smooth as brushtrokes, and they burn with fire so black that my eye cannot hold them; they shift and twist and shimmer and crawl along the blade, sucking light from the air. .
I have never seen anything like the Sword. I have known the Sword for lifetimes.
When it destroys the Tear, it will break the Power’s hold upon the river. A river choked for a thousand years will shatter this place and burst free through these chambers. Will crash from the face of the vertical city upon the camp below.
In my hand is the death of the Black Knives, and their rebirth.
Their death is today.
When the edge carves into the Tear, it screams like I’m murdering the world.
And maybe I am.
››scanning fwd››
Dawn at my back ignites the rainbow.
Beyond huge. . solid as Bifrost in the billows of my waterfall’s spray. .
One foot stretches out from the face of what was the city’s fifth tier, high above; the other is grounded somewhere out in the vast mist-shrouded sea wrack that used to be the Black Knife camp.
That’s my pot of gold. Right there. In the endless earth-shaking thunder of my waterfall, I can imagine the echoes of Black Knife screams.
Somewhere to the south, a new river rolls down the Boedecken Waste, black with mud and shreds of tent, shattered wagons and broken bodies.
I look upon the work of my hand, and it is good.
Only one flaw in the plan so far: the rendezvous is far enough away from the waterfall’s thunder that I can still hear the idiots argue. About me.
I lean against the wall outside the shattered gape of what used to be a window, where the nine survivors are dressing themselves in the clothing I brought for them, treating whatever wounds Marade can’t Heal with supplies I gave them, and eating and drinking food and water I provided for them, while they all talk about how they just can’t trust me.
“-it doesn’t make sense.” Marade’s still standing up for me, at least. Sounds like she’s the only one. “If his sole need was revenge, why risk the rescue at all? He could as easily have left me-left me-”
Even from out here, I can hear the choke. She can’t say it.
“Where we were,” she finishes lamely. “He could have done what has been done without even your help, though unleashing the river would have cost his life-”
That much is true.
“You weren’t there,” Tizarre says. “None of you. You didn’t see him. You didn’t hear him.”
“And the cubs-I mean, so what?” This from Jashe the Otter. “How many would have lived through the river thing, anyway?”
“That’s my point,” Tizarre says. “Why . . do that? Why the show?”
“Diversion,” Marade says, but she doesn’t sound too sure of it.
“That’s what he said. That’s what he told me it was about. To make sure they’d chase him up into the city. To thin them out on the ground and give you all a better chance to escape-but then he hit their children. So more of them stayed. To protect the children.”
“Well, I don’t care,” somebody else says. “I’m just damn grateful to be alive.”
“You say that now,” Tizarre insists darkly. “But he’s not done with us. That’s why the rescue. He still has a use for us. That’s the only reason. Just wait. You’ll see.”
Another man might be offended. I probably would be, if she were wrong. But, y’know, some Black Knives can probably swim.
I stare out at my waterfall. At my rainbow. The rainbow is a promise from God that there will never be another Flood.
I don’t plan to need one.
Fuck punishment. This is about extinction.
KHRYL’S JUSTICE
It wasn’t a good dream.
I couldn’t make it make sense, even as a nightmare: it should have been a net over my face, not a burlap sack. Chunks of puke shouldn’t be flopping around my head. I was sure of that.
The next time awareness knocked a hole in my skull, I started to worry that I was naked, when I should have been suited up in my black leathers. And this wad of cloth tied into my mouth with what felt like rope? Where the fuck had that come from?
It did, however, explain why the chunks of puke were pretty much all small enough to have come out of my nose.
Later, a dimly foggy realization chewed into my forehead that the shoulder I was facedown over should have been flesh instead of metal.
The last worst part: it wasn’t rope on my wrists and ankles. Forget that I didn’t have the throwing knife that was supposed to be in the concealed sheath behind the collar of my missing tunic; not only would that knife have been useless against the armor on this particular back but it wouldn’t have cut what was binding my wrists anyway, which I could recognize because I still had some feeling in my fingers, because he hadn’t put them on as tight as the Los Angeles Social Police had a few years back when they pinched me for Forcible Contact Upcaste.
Stripcuffs.
I puked into the sack again.
Then I fell back down the black hole.
I’ve been lucky enough to make it through my life so far with less than my share of major head trauma. Sure, I’ve been knocked around, bashed with sticks and stones, quarterstaves and iron-bound clubs, warhammers and friggin’ morningstars, even a brick or two; stabbed with stilettos, daggers, knives, and smallswords; taken a broadsword through the liver and an axe into the thigh; been variously shot with arrows, sling stones, bullets and motherfucking blowgun darts-not to mention being once or twice hurled from high places-but I’ve mostly managed to avoid being whacked on the head hard enough to produce more than a few seconds of unconsciousness.