Blade of Tyshalle by Matthew Woodring Stover

  It could not have guessed that, in fact, Avery Shanks rather enjoys the taste of blood.

  And so when her sharp teeth latched into the side of its neck, sawing through skin to rip its jugular, she still didn't let go as blood poured across them both, but kept biting deeper and deeper, and chewed through muscle to sever its carotid artery.

  It must have still been entirely surprised when it died.

  All this I got in the instant's flash. I regarded her with the same wary respect I offer Caine: the recognition of being in the presence of a natural killer.

  "All who know your granddaughter desire nothing beyond her welfare," I told her. "We are agreed that she can do no better than to remain in your care; and it is for this reason that I now create you Countess of Lyrissan—which you will hold in fief from Lady Faith-and further name you Steward of all the lands and holdings of the Marchionness until she reaches her majority."

  "Countess?" she said. I watched her try the title on and discover that she liked its fit.

  Which was as well. She cannot be returned to Earth, and she is an aristocrat to the bone. I confess that I had the interests of the Empire in mind: Placing a ruthless and frighteningly capable Businessman in control, for the next fifteen years, of what was sure to become our primary overland trade route would certainly redound to the Empire's benefit.

  I had thought to make her title conditional—to make her swear to give over her vendetta against Caine—but Hari himself had earlier persuaded me otherwise. "Let her be who she is," he'd said. "You put a rule on her like that, she'll just start trying to figure out ways around it. And in the meantime, she'll be pissed at you for making her go to the trouble. Avery Shanks is a bad enemy to have. Let me worry about her. In the end, she'll understand that hurting me hurts Faith; she'd chew off her own arm first."

  This might have been my first true lesson in governance: Sometimes, to accomplish more, do less.

  And then, inevitably, there was Raithe.

  I think of him often, now, and when I think of him, I see him as he was before me in that Audience: kneeling upon the steps below the Oaken Throne. He kept his head lowered, refusing to meet my eye. His left hand he had held as a fist before him, wrapped in layer after layer of linen to the size of a white fabric boxing glove. While he knelt, the oil from his hand had slowly soaked out through the linen, until it dripped upon the steps before him like black tears.

  He had come in search of a doom. He wished his tale to end with punishment for his crimes.

  I didn't want to judge him. I had seen all that he has suffered, all he has done, and all that has been done to him. He is a very lonely, very troubled young man.

  Caine and I had discussed Raithe, as well, for I had anticipated this moment.

  "Better keep him close," Caine had advised. "That fucker's dangerous. He's only gonna get more dangerous as he goes along. You need him where you can keep an eye on him."

  "What do you have in mind?"

  "I was thinking," Caine had said, a wicked glint sharpening his smile, "that he'd make a pretty good Ambassador to the Infinite Court." I thought about that for a while.

  While I was thinking, Caine had gone on: "Get Raithe installed here, and I'm pretty sure between the two of you, you could get Damon on the Council of Brothers. That's the place for him: making policy."

  "You could be right," I admitted.

  "You're better off with Raithe. You need somebody who isn't afraid to break a rule here and there."

  "Like you."

  "Me?" He laughed. "I don't break rules. I don't even notice them."

  I remember musing how alike Raithe and Hari were, in so many ways, and I made mention of this. "In a sense, you're almost like father and son." "Yeah," he grunted. "Not in a good sense."

  "Have you ever wondered if you might be his father? You told me he's illegitimate--that his mother was a prostitute in Ankhana—and his age would be about right. You said you were pretty wild, in those days." "Nah, he's not my son," he said carelessly. "Might be yours, though." I stared, drop-jawed and blinking. "You must be joking."

  "No, I'm not. That's what makes it so funny. His mother was a Korish whore at the Exotic Love; I didn't hang out at the Exotic in those days—I couldn't afford to look through the goddamn doors, let alone buy a girl. My place was Fader's, over in the Warrens."

  "Fader's," I said hollowly, caught in memories a quarter century old. "I remember Fader."

  "Yeah, well, she's dead now. You used to work at the Exotic, right?" I nodded, numb.

  "You remember a girl named Marte? Dark skinned, tiny?"

  "Marte—I do, I think."

  "Ever bang her?"

  "Caine—"

  "Come on, you can tell me. Did you?"

  "I—I'm not sure. I might have. I had a lot of sex in those days, Hari, and I wasn't often sober."

  "Well, he's got your build. I don't know what color your eyes were, before the surgeries—"

  "Blue."

  He shrugged. "And he's got all these mind powers and shit, and you're the bust-ass thaumaturge, right? You gotta admit it's possible."

  "Yes," I murmured slowly. "I suppose I do."

  All this swirled through my mind as I looked down upon him in the Great Hall. I tried to persuade him to drop his request; he is not, after all, my subject. Any punishment for his crimes must come from the Council of Brothers, for he retains his rank of Ambassador, with its attendant diplomatic immunity. "Don't preach law to me," he said there. "I don't need law. I need justice"

  His plea moved me, and so I reluctantly consented.

  "This, then, is your doom, Raithe of Ankhana." I pointed down at the pool of oil collecting on the step. "You are now the chokepoint of the Blind God's ambitions for this world; it is through you its power will still seek to poison us. Your doom is to resist the Blind God with every breath, and to struggle every day to repair the damage he has done through you."

  He said, "How can I—?"

  "You cannot. You will strive without respite until the day of your death, always knowing that you will ultimately fail. Always knowing that the instant you surrender, things you love will begin to die."

  For a long moment he knelt there, his head lowered; and then without a word he slowly and deliberately used the hem of his robe to mop up the oil that had dripped from his hand. Then he touched his forehead to the stain, rose, and backed out of my presence.

  I watched him go in silence.

  "That's kinda harsh."

  There is a small alcove behind the Oaken Throne. Within the alcove, there is a chair, set so that its occupant can peer out an unobtrusive spygate concealed within the ornate carvings of the wall; it was through this spy-gate that the dark, dry voice came.

  "You think so? What I gave him wasn't punishment, it was a gift," I said softly. "I gave his life purpose. Meaning."

  "Some gift. Next Christmas? Cards only, huh?"

  I allowed myself a gentle chuckle. "I still wish you'd let me give you a title"

  "Forget it. I have other plans." Hari had, over the past day, dropped veiled hints that he and the god had reached some sort of rapprochement. "There are some places," he'd admitted, "where our interests coincide." "Hari—"

  "Drop it, Kris. Like I told you the first time—" When he had turned down my every offer, from Duke of Public Order down to what he called Baronet of Buttfuck Nowhere. "—if I hold a title from you, some people are gonna hold the Empire accountable for shit I do. Believe me, Kris, you don't want that. Believe me."

  I found I did believe him.

  "And what is it you're going to do?"

  His voice warmed with that familiar wicked grin. "Make trouble."

  12

  Hours became days that turned to weeks. I kept myself buried in work—which was primarily discovering whom among the nobility I could trust to administrate the Empire's business. I also helped Lady Avery and Lady Faith establish their household; Francis Rossi, the unfortunate Actor Kier and I had kidnapped so long ago,
became Lady Faith's aide. Caine trusts him, and the new Marchioness needs someone who can not only protect and defend her person, but can translate her English into Westerling. Lady Avery has already gathered a substantial cadre of former Actors to be her agents. I saw little of Caine during those weeks, by my choice.

  I could not face him.

  I had made one dreadful mistake, a mistake that haunted me, poisoning my every waking moment, until the only answer my horror would allow was the distraction of constant work

  I had looked into the abyss.

  This was how I did it:

  "I need to know, Hari," I said one day. "I need to know how you knew it would work When you killed Ma'elKoth. How could you have possibly known? How did you know he was not wholly the blind god? How did you know he would turn upon his master once you joined him with the river? How did you know you weren't handing the enemy the exact victory it most desired?"

  Finally I came to the real question, which I barely dared to ask "How did you know you weren't destroying the world, instead of saving it?" "Ma'elKoth asked me the same thing,"

  "And?"

  He shrugged. "I didn't."

  I stared, speechless.

  "I thought I was dead, Kris," he said. "There was no way Kollberg and the Social Police were gonna let me walk out of there. All I could do was try to save Faith."

  My mouth opened, and a chill coiled within my guts. "You . . . all you could—"

  "I didn't even know that killing Ma'elKoth with Kosall would channel him into the river. Didn't have a clue. How could I? All I knew was that he was the one who had the hold on Faith. She was the link to the river, but he was the link to her. So I killed him. He's dead; she's off the hook. Then Soapy shoots my ass off, and I'm dead, too. The blind god gets the sword—it doesn't need her anymore. Raithe was gonna leave her with the elves. They'd have looked after her, healed her as best they could. She might have had some kind of life." He shrugged again. "It was the best I could do."

  Still half dumbstruck, I stammered, "Then—then your plan—you didn't--all this—?"

  "That was the plan. The only plan I had."

  "From the beginning ..." I murmured.

  "Yeah. From as soon as I understood what was going on."

  "All this—the prisoners, the Faces, the Monastics. The destruction of the city. Raithe. Me. You used us all."

  "Yeah."

  "You made all this happen just to save one little girl."

  He nodded. "And to take a chunk out of Ma'elKoth. Leave the world something to remember me by."

  He spread his hands as though offering a hug to my horrified stare. "Hey, what can I say? I am who I am."

  "Yes," I agreed numbly. "Yes, you are."

  "You never know how things'll play out. You can't. The universe doesn't work that way." He grinned at me. "So cheer the fuck up, huh?" "No, I—no, I mean ..." I shook my head, trying to fit all this into my reality. "You found yourself on a precipice, in the dark. So you jumped." "Every day, Kris. Every fucking day."

  And he sounded happy about it.

  I can't be happy about it. I can barely even think about it. It makes me feel empty: hollow, fragile, broken inside.

  It's all so meaningless

  I have been judged with every judgment I have pronounced. Like t'Passe, I represent a people suddenly granted the full rights of Ankhanan citizens, whether we want them or not. Like Kierendal, I am sentenced to live without those I could not save. Like Faith, I must take comfort from a title and power bestowed--inflicted--upon me without my desire or my consent. Like Raithe, I have been given the thorny gift of purpose.

  Like Caine, the world now asks of me only that I be who I am.

  What have I done to deserve this?

  Hari likes to quote Nietzsche: "And when you gaze into the abyss, re-member that the abyss gazes also into you."

  My only reply is the mantra of Conrad's Kurtz.

  I am aware that this is yet another failure of character, that other, stronger men do not suffer from the nausea of the void. I am also aware of the gape of hell beneath my feet. The history of both my worlds is replete with monsters called kings, and demons called emperors.

  In every case, they became so simply because, in a universe without meaning, there was no reason not to.

  And here is another gift I have been given, far greater than I can possibly deserve: When the horror overwhelms me, I have someone to whom I can always turn, who will always save my life.

  13

  Caine took another long, slow sip of the hundred-year-old Tinnaran in his snifter and made a face. "Know what really sucks?" he said. "On this whole fucking planet, nobody makes a decent scotch."

  We sat together in the palace library, long after midnight. I sat at this very table, near the warmth of a slowly wavering lamp flame. Caine sprawled across an overstuffed chair upholstered in glistening crushed velvet the color of black cherries, while we shared a cask of the palace cellar's finest brandy. "There are worse problems," I said.

  "For you, maybe. How am I supposed to face old age without Laphroaig?"

  "Han—"

  He waved his snifter at me. "Pour me some more of this nasty shit, huh? It's hard enough to be serious when I'm sober; it's impossible when I'm only half drunk."

  I tipped another splash of brandy into his glass, and he swirled it while he waited for it to warm to his hand. After I refilled his, I added a splash to my own. I took a long drink and replenished again before I replied. "Do you remember the last time we sat and drank together like this?"

  He lifted his glass and stared at the lamp flame through the warm amber transparency of the brandy. "Last time, it was retsina. Remember?"

  "Vividly."

  "Twenty-five—no, twenty-seven, twenty-eight years ago, it must be. Yeah, I was thinking of that. You were pretty down that night, too." "Too?"

  He gave me a knowing Oh, come on, now look. "Shit, Kris, if we were on Earth, I'd be taking you to an emergency room somewhere to get your serotonin balance adjusted."

  I suddenly found my brandy much more interesting than I did his face. "Hey," he said, "you want to talk about it, we'll talk. You don't want to talk, we'll drink. I'm easy."

  For a time, we did just that: sat, and drank. He seemed to enjoy the quiet; for me, the silence rang with anomie, and I felt as though my chair were made of knives.

  At length, I made a try. "I only—" I began. "I remember, a few days before I left on freemod, I wrote the story of what happened to us at the Conservatory, and what we did. I remember wondering what our lives would be like, twenty or thirty years from then. How we might meet again."

  "You didn't come close to this, huh?"

  "Not really."

  "Is that a problem?"

  "Maybe. Maybe that's part of it."

  "How come?"

  "I just can't make myself understand, Hari," I said helplessly. "I can't figure out what I did right, and what I did wrong. Here I am: Emperor of Ankhana. Power. Limitless wealth. Eternal youth. And I can't even decide if this is a reward or a punishment."

  "I might not be the right guy to be having this conversation with," Caine said, chuckling. "For me, breathing is its own reward."

  "How can you laugh?"

  "What, should I cry? Would that make more sense?"

  "I don't know, Hari." I set down my glass and turned away from him. "I don't even know what sense is, anymore."

  Suddenly my face was in my hands.

  "Hey—hey, come on, Kris." He'd lost his bantering tone, and his hand was warm on my shoulder.

  "Maybe laughter is the only answer," I said, rubbing my burning eyes. "It's all so ... ridiculous, you know? How could these things have happened to me? How can I possibly be who I have become? I don't under-stand, you see? I need to understand, and I can't. Everything is so .. . random. I can't make it make sense."

  "Yeah, no shit. What did you expect?"

  Slowly, I raised my head once more. "I don't know. Maybe—maybe I expected that I
would have learned something. That I'd have an idea what it all meant."

  "The meaning of life? Shit, Kris, I can help you there."

  "You can?"

  "Sure. It doesn't mean anything."

  Now I did laugh bitterly, hopelessly. "Some help."

  "It is what it is, Kris. One day you're alive. One day you're dead. One day you're a loser. One day you're king of the fucking world. No reason. It doesn't mean anything. It just is."

  "I don't accept that. I can't accept that"

  He shrugged. "Everybody spends their whole lives pretending that shit isn't random. We trace connections between events, and we invest those connections with meaning. That's why we all make stories out of our lives. That's what stories are: ways of pretending that things happen for a reason."

  "I keep thinking of my father—of the Ravenlock. Of my brother Torronell. What did they do to deserve such horrible deaths? How is it that I live to rule, and they died in agony?"

  "How should I know? Those aren't my stories."

  "Are they mine?"

  "Maybe you shouldn't worry so much about their stories. Maybe you should just pay attention to their roles in your story. Let them worry about what they deserved or didn't deserve."

  "Let the dead bury the dead," I said.

  "Yeah. What you're gonna do about it, that's your story. You might find things make a little more sense."

  "What kind of story can possibly make sense of that? What about all the innocent citizens of Ankhana who murdered each other in the plague? What about all the ones who burned to death? What about all the cowards who ran and hid and let others die, and now walk free in the sunlight?"