“Grow up?” She sounded even more icily contemptuous when she spoke Westerling. “What does Skinwalker know of grow up except to burn cubs so they never do?”
“Huh.” He caught the accent. “You’re Ankhanan.”
She lurched to her feet. “I am Black Knife!”
“Sure, okay. Whatever. Where’s the Hand?”
She showed him a grin full of tusks and made a fist. “Here? Only my hand.”
“The longer this takes, the less you’ll like it.”
“I shove you through taggannik once already. I can shove you again.”
“What, the gate? I don’t think so.”
She raised her fist and her eyes flashed the same sunlight yellow of the bull’s-eye. The crystal’s glow became radiance that flared to blinding in a single eyeblink. It entirely erased the chamber and the bucks and the bitches and even his own body … but there was something he saw when he was blind to everything else. Below his feet, half-buried in the impossible brilliance, hung a shadow.
A human-shaped shadow.
“Huh,” he said under his breath. “Well, all right, then.”
The radiance faded as suddenly as it had arisen. Everybody looked kind of surprised that he was still there.
“Here’s the thing,” he said. “You’re not in charge here anymore. Black Knives, Butt Sporks, whatever. You’re done. Pack up your bitches and get the fuck out. Take the females too.”
Kaiggez was still on her feet and still had her fist clenched. She growled, “What voice do you have here to say what I am? What voice do you have here to even speak?”
“It’s not a debate. It’s an order.”
“You? Order me?”
“Isn’t that what I just said?”
“You still have tongue to speak only from respect for my buck. You breathe only from respect for his love for you.”
“Well, there’s a coincidence.”
“How do you get out from True Hell where I put you, little bitch?”
“You’re gonna have to get used to shit not depending on what you do or don’t do.”
“What I do? I speak with Voice of God Itself. One word from me crushes light from your eye forever.”
“Yeah, big talk. You want to do this with me?” He opened his arms as though offering a hug. “Make a move.”
This got a dangerous rumble out of the bucks, right up until Kaiggez made her move, which cut off the rumble like a punch in the throat. She leaned forward and peeled back her lips around her long and impressively sharp tusks, and her yellow eyes burned with furious triumph.
She raised her fist. Around her upraised fist gathered power that was visible mainly in how it made everything else less real.
He’d seen that power before, the ball of Reality: the power that had allowed Crowmane to bend time and space like a fever nightmare. He had felt it on the Purificapex, when the Living Fist of Khryl laid her hand upon the Sword of Man.
He had felt it at the west end of God’s Way in Ankhana, as he watched the Incarnate Ma’elKoth descend from the heavens.
Tucker was edging back. “This is you not being stupid?”
“Shut up.”
He lifted his fist and extended his middle finger up toward her, then waggled his fist to make sure she got a good look. “To avoid any, y’know, cross-cultural misunderstanding: this gesture—the one I’m making at you right now—this gesture has a meaning, where I come from, that translates roughly as Try me and I will fuck your asshole with my fighting claw.”
“God can hurt you and leave you alive,” Kaiggez growled. “My first word can make you beg for death—”
“Your entire fucking vocabulary can’t mess up my hair.”
Tucker said from the side of his mouth, “You sure about that?”
He replied the same way. “We’re about to find out.”
“When I apologize to Orbek later, he forgives because he knows you. Knows how you can be hornets in God’s own Cunt.”
“Okay.”
“How do we hurt you, little bitch? Do we make you ancient so your bones snap like reeds? Do we make you rot so we hear you scream as your parts fall off?”
“Look, is this gonna happen or not? I’ve got shit to do.”
“Then it happens,” she snarled, and snapped her fist toward him. “Burn.”
“Oh, that’s original.” He didn’t burn. He didn’t even move, except to raise his left hand.
On that upraised left hand coalesced a shimmering nonsphere of Reality. By the time it assembled itself, it was the only Reality in the chamber. Her fist was now only the flesh and bone it had always been.
“See, here’s another thing,” he said. “I know your god, and your god knows me. And it likes me better than you.”
Her eyes popped wide as saucers. She made a faint choking noise.
He smiled at her. “Hey, want to see a trick?”
“Better be a good one,” Tucker muttered.
He lifted the Reality and stared into and through it, reaching out with mindview.
Something winked at him again. An encouraging wink.
He said through his teeth, “Get my back.”
“What’s about to happen here?”
“I don’t know. That’s why you need to have my back. If we survive, I’ll make you glad you did.”
“Well, when you put it that way …”
This time, he sought the level of mind that could show him the connections and currents of black Flow. Slowly, cautiously, he teased loose a fiber of Flow from his own Shell; the last time something like this had happened it just about blew his head off, so this time he figured to sort of ease into it …
He let the tiny fiber brush Reality, and his head exploded.
No …
Felt like it, though.
He thought he might be on his knees. He smelled a bitter stink of burning hair. He remembered one of the Smoke Hunter Leisure brats talking about how cool it looked when your eyeballs explode, and he figured now he kind of knew what the little fucker had been talking about. There was an awful racket, all kinds of shouting and cheering and derisive catcalls and shit, and it seemed logical to him that if he could still hear with exploded ears, he could probably see with exploded eyes.
He looked around. He was on his knees after all; his eyes had apparently not only failed to explode, they seemed to be working better then they had before, because he was looking down into the yellow glow of the crystal beneath him and now he could again see the shadow below—
And now he knew what that shadow was.
“Tucker.” He coughed, and gagged, and barely managed to swallow vomit instead of spewing it. “Am I on fire?”
“Not anymore. Probably want to replace your leathers. And maybe shave your head.” Tucker was crouching beside him. “What just happened?”
“Uh … remember when I …” He gagged again, and again swallowed. “When I told you … detailed intelligence and shit?”
“Yeah …?”
“I think this just now is when I actually learn it.”
“I’m not gonna ask how exactly that works, but I hope you got good shit,” Tucker said, “because the HMS Cowed Black Knives weighed anchor right about when your knees hit the floor. You might recall that she told you to burn.”
He lifted his head. “I got more than good shit,” he said as he rose to his feet. “I got all the shit there is.”
“Maybe God is like you say,” Kaiggez purred. “Maybe it takes pity on you. Or maybe it just wants to give me more time to play.”
He made a show of dusting himself off while he considered how to make her game into his.
“Your god,” he said at length, “is not what you think it is. It didn’t just spring out of the universe’s asshole. Your god was created. Designed and put together in a specific way to accomplish a specific task. Your god does not love you. You’re not its children. Most of the time it doesn’t remember you exist. It was here long before there was such a thing as a Black Kni
fe Nation, and I’d tell you that it’ll be here long after you’re all gone, if, y’know, it will. But it won’t.
“Where I come from, there was a guy who made a splash saying God is dead—and that was in a world where nobody could even be sure that god had been real in the first place. Yours, on the other hand? Real, sure. But it’s dead too.”
“You say.” She raised her fist and more Reality gathered around it. “Tell me again God is dead!”
He said, “Give me that.”
The Reality vanished from her hand and reappeared in his. She swayed and her knees buckled. The three bitches below her leaped up and eased her back into her seat.
“Thanks.” He meant it, because he didn’t have attention to spare for Control Disciplines and his burns were starting to really fucking hurt. He understood now: he didn’t even need mindview. Not here.
His burns healed. His hair grew. So did his beard.
His leathers changed.
Gone was the supple new leather. Gone was the clean lanolin smell and Kravmik’s careful stitching. What he wore now was scuffed and worn and crusted with white salt rings of ancient sweat, and the threads that held rips and slashes together had been stained brown with old blood. It wasn’t exactly trading up, but at least now he was comfortable.
And for the first time he could remember, no part of him hurt.
Not anymore.
“Um, yeah …” Tucker murmured beside him. “That’s a little, uh, different …”
“Just a costume.” He shrugged it into a perfect fit. “And shut up.”
There was plenty of Reality left. More than enough to go around. He turned his palm upward, as though he balanced Reality upon it like a ball.
“Temporal discharge,” he said. “It might go on a few days. Even a month or two. Then it’s all over. No Smoke Hunt. No gate. No power. No god.” He shrugged. “Sorry. If you’re nice to me, maybe I won’t kill your next god.”
She leaned on the polished stone armrest like it was all that stopped her from falling out of the chair. “You say you kill God?”
“Not on purpose.”
“Your brain rots till even humans smell it.”
“It died on Assumption Day.” He tilted his head and righted it again. “It just hasn’t stopped twitching yet.”
He hefted the Reality as if it had weight. “Like I said: temporal discharge. It sent power forward in time to maintain its consciousness while it waited.”
“And God’s wait is over.” Her voice rose, and she shifted forward. “Black Knives rule Our Place again from today. There’s its power. More than any god needs. Our god lives forever.”
“Have you not been paying attention? It never needed you. Nothing you do can save it. It’s already done. What we’re doing here today is working out how shit is gonna be afterward, you follow?”
“For what God waits all this time, then?”
He lifted the ball of Reality so that he was looking through it at her. “Me.”
She made some more of those choking noises.
He nodded sympathetically. “I know it’s kind of hard to take in. Imagine it from my side. I spent my whole life fighting it. Running from it. I destroyed everyone who ever cared about me because I couldn’t face what I really am. A little while ago I learned some hard lessons about being myself, and they got me thinking. Some things we don’t get to choose. Like Orbek said, ‘No one chooses their clan. Born Black Knife, you’re Black Knife.’ So your god and me, we reached an understanding.”
“What are you, then? What do you claim to be?”
“I am master of this place,” he said. “I am master of you.”
All the bitches leaped up then, shouting and shaking their fists. The bucks roared, raising their arms and flipping fighting claws forward over their fists.
“God is not the only power here, little bitch.” Kaiggez lowered her fist and turned her snarl on the fifty or sixty enormous ogrillo bucks who stood a couple rings above him and Tucker. “Kill them. Hurt them first. You will live forever.”
He could read Tucker’s lips. This must be why nobody put you in the Diplomatic Service.
He mouthed back: Watch this.
He raised the ball of Reality, and his voice was the peal of thunder. “Silence.”
And his will was done: instant silence, so absolute that his ears rang.
Good so far.
He turned to the bucks. “Want a piece of me? Step on up, fuckers. One at a time or all in a rush.”
The bucks looked at one another. Finally, the largest, most scarred, hardest-ass-looking one shrugged and stepped forward.
“You’re today’s lucky winner.” He lowered the ball of Reality to his side and just stared at the huge buck. “Die.”
The buck snorted and went to take another step, but swayed instead. His eyes went wide, and he clutched at his chest in growing disbelief. Then his legs gave out and he dropped to his knees. He made a choking, gagging kind of sound, then pitched forward onto his face and lay still.
“Did anybody not see that? Does anybody need it explained?”
He looked around the chamber, meeting each Black Knife’s eyes in turn.
Then he looked at the fallen buck. “Rise and walk.”
After one stretching silent second, the buck convulsed, whooping great gasps of air. He pushed himself up to his knees … and instead of rising, he lowered his face to the floor. And stayed there.
Tucker murmured, “Nice.”
“None of you need to bother with submission,” he said. “You’re already mine. What you have is mine. What you are is mine. At my word, you come out. At my word you go in. At my word you walk the world. At my word you lie in darkness. At my word you live. At my word you die.
“My word is your law. You have no law but my word. Break the law and you suffer. Defy the law and you beg for death.
“To affront me is to die. To affront my people is to affront me. Take care that you do neither.
“These are my words. This is your law.”
“Your people?” Veins bulged in Kaiggez’s thick neck. “Slavers who whip us? Murderers who destroy our people along with Our Place? Men who cannot stand without a boot on Black Knife necks?”
“No.”
“That’s all you say? No?”
“Your neck is my neck.”
She rocked back, suddenly pensive.
“My brother is Orbek Black Knife: Taykarget. Your buck. Your husband. I have been called Caine, and Dominic, and Shade and Jonathan Fist and K’Thal and Hari Michaelson and many other names, and I am proud to bear every one. But those names are not me.”
He bared his teeth up toward Kaiggez. “You know who I am. Tell them.”
She looked like she was snarling something under her breath.
He squeezed the ball of Reality. “Tell them.”
Reluctantly she rose. Reluctantly she drew breath. “He is Nazutakkaarik … Nazutakkaarik of Hell’s nightmare.”
She lowered her head. “He is Skinwalker. There is no other.”
Silence.
The silence deepened while he looked around the chamber until he met every single pair of yellow eyes. “Anybody wants to get stupid with me, first go find somebody who lived through the Horror. Ask what happens when I get angry.”
He raised his left hand and regarded the crackling swirl of Reality he held. Somehow he felt like he should be able to see his future in there. But all he saw was power.
So he used it because, y’know, what the hell else is power for?
When at length he looked again to the motionless, silent Black Knives, he said, “Why are you still here? Fuck off. All of you. Now.”
As though they had suddenly awakened from a dream, the ogrilloi slowly, unsteadily bestirred themselves to leave. He looked at Kaiggez. “Not you.”
He beckoned. “We need to talk.”
The Black Knives filed out, leaving behind only the fetch-blanks and Kaiggez, who reluctantly climbed down toward them.
“You do put on a show,” Tucker said.
“Thanks. Nice catch on the die business.”
“You’re welcome. Rise and walk was a bit of a trick, though. That’s not easy magick to cancel on short notice. On no notice.”
“I have nothing but confidence in your ability.”
“Thus proving yourself to be a gentleman of taste and discernment, but what would you have done if I’d dropped it?”
He shrugged. “Something else. Better this way.”
“Yeah?”
“With me, the rise and walk part isn’t a happy ending.”
“I take your meaning.”
Kaiggez slipped down from the last ring. She lowered herself to one knee and bowed her head. “What does Skinwalker wish to say?”
“The Skinwalker wants to—” He stopped, and made a face. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Kaiggez. Get up. And if I do start talking about myself in third person, you have my permission to stab me in the face.”
She rose, but still averted her eyes. He let it go; to ogrilloi, a level stare is a dominance test, and he didn’t want to invite any more of that shit. Not now. Instead he reached over and laid his right hand on the top of her head. “I called you down here to say I’m sorry.”
Her head jerked up, and for a glancing second she looked straight into his eyes before averting her face again. “Sorry for just now, or sorry for everything?”
“For just now.”
“Just now ain’t much.”
“It’s what you get. The rest? That was war. Including the cubs. Even your cubs. It’s okay that you hate me for it. Just now, though … well, I’m sorry to bitch-slap you in front of your friends.”
“My family,” she growled, low.
“Our family.” He put his hand on her head again, and lightly stroked the brush of hair that sprang up from her spinal ridge. “These things should be private. I’m sorry it wasn’t. And I want to make it up to you.”
She stepped back and cocked her head so she could look at him sidelong. “Make up how?”
“By having you help.”
“Help you kill last Black Knives?”
“I need you to look after our family. More. I need you to lead them.”
Her eyes slitted, and she did not respond.
“Yeah, I’m the boss of you now. Now I say you’re the boss of everybody else.”