“Consequences?” Duncan’s still lost. “What kind of consequences?”
Caine shows them his teeth. They appear very white, and singularly sharp. “My kind.”
Ma’elKoth says, “The Sword of Man.”
“Fucking right.”
“Pure destruction. Permanent destruction.”
He shrugs. “My whole life, I can’t remember a single thing I ever managed to take back.”
“The power to punish gods …” Deliann murmurs, then he shrugs too. “I like it.”
Duncan shakes his head. “It seems like a dark life.”
“I’ll try to bear up. One more thing. When Angvasse and I spontaneously combust—or whatever—from joining the Powers on the Purificapex … well, look. It’s gonna put us into the Gatekeeper, and some of Him into us. Like when Deliann joined with the river. So listen, I’ve been over this with Angvasse, and she’s in favor. Because she’s a hero. A real hero, who has the power to do great things, and who lives to help people. To protect people who can’t protect themselves. So if we ever need a hero, the Gatekeeper can make one. As long as the Gatekeeper’s in charge, a brand-spankin’ new Angvasse Khlaylock can come walking right out of any dil in the world. Either world.”
“An inexhaustible supply of heroes,” Duncan murmurs. “How did you manage to arrange this?”
“It was a negotiation. To get a little, you give a little.”
“What did you give?”
Caine shrugs. “My retirement.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I sold my soul to Pirichanthe.”
“Your soul?”
“Or whatever. Look, Pirichanthe was Bound to keep a lid on human gods. That was its whole reason for being. Literally. But it couldn’t really do it—we keep finding ways to fuck with the world—so it decided the next best thing was to find somebody who wasn’t afraid to get up on his hind legs and smack a god in the balls.”
“Metaphorically.”
“You think so? Ask Ma’elKoth.”
Duncan squints at him. “So in exchange for a permanent hero …”
“It got a monster down the block.”
“The only reason civilized Atticus has the luxury to be civilized,” Duncan murmurs, “is that he’s got a monster watching his back.”
“You must be quoting someone smart.”
“You frighten me, Caine.”
“I should.” He looks to each of them. “I should frighten all of you.”
“Except for me,” the horse-witch says.
“Except for you. Everything is except for you.”
“I like it that way,” she says. “It makes me feel special.”
“Just before I killed him, Purthin Khlaylock told me fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. I think he was wrong. I think the more you fear God, the scarier God gets. Fear His Anger, and He starts tossing thunderbolts and earthquakes and whatever. Fear His punishment, and He gives you eternal damnation. People need to know they don’t have to be afraid. It’s God who has to be afraid.”
The horse-witch smiles fondly. “For God, fear of Caine is the beginning of wisdom.”
Caine returns her smile as a fierce grin. “Somebody should write that down.”
Duncan frowns at her. “Caine doesn’t scare you?”
“Of course he does,” the horse-witch says. “Caine’s a monster who gives monsters nightmares.”
“But then—?”
“We don’t use that name,” she says. “Call a monster’s name and it remembers where you sleep.”
“Exactly,” Caine says. “As soon as the fuckers understand they need to check their closets and under their beds for Caine before they turn out the lights, a lot of potential problems become self-correcting.”
“Consequences.”
“Believe it.”
“And the Gatekeeper—”
“Can dropkick Caine out of any given dil. Just like Angvasse. Wherever and whenever he decides he needs Somebody hurt.”
“You’re giving this Gatekeeper a great deal of very dangerous power.”
“That’s why I got somebody I can trust.”
“And that would be—?” Duncan says, and then he realizes everyone is looking at him. “Oh, no—come on, you can’t possibly ask—”
“The world needs you, Duncan. I need you.”
“But I’m the last man who’d want—”
“I know. ‘The only man who can be trusted with power is a man who doesn’t want it.’ Wait—who said that?”
“But—you can’t—”
“You’ve been here. You’ve seen. You know the need is real. Jesus Christ, Duncan, who would you trust?”
“Well, I … well, I …”
“I’ll let you call me Hari.”
“What? You will?” He frowns, just a bit. “Will you call me Dad?”
Caine smiles. “Are we haggling now?”
“I just … I don’t know. There’s just so much I wish could be different. Should be different.”
“I told you before that we don’t get should, we get is—except right now, right here, we’ve got a chance to take an is and make it into a should.”
“Don’t be afraid,” the horse-witch says, so softly he can barely hear her. “Be what you are.”
“What if,” Caine says slowly, almost solemnly, “what if the worst thing you ever did wasn’t you?”
“What?”
“What if. You don’t remember the beating that killed Mom, do you?”
“I remember plenty of others.”
“Me too. But what if. What if it wasn’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if she got mugged? Hit by a Businessman’s car?” He crouches at Duncan’s side. “What if she didn’t die?”
Duncan can no longer breathe. “Are you …” he croaks. “What are you saying?”
“The old guy at the clinic that day—the one who looked like me. What was he doing there? What was inside that crutch he was carrying?”
“I … I don’t …”
“Think about it. What if somebody Healed her that afternoon? What if somebody took her away?” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “What if she’s sitting inside that yurt over there, waiting for you to decide whether to take the chance?”
“Is she?” The words scrape his dry throat so hard he tastes blood. “Is she there?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“The only way you’ll ever know is if you say yes.”
“Yes.”
“That’s right. Just yes. A simple word.”
“No, you don’t understand. That was the word. Yes.”
Caine stands. “Well, all right, then. Go take a look.”
The Sword is gone. Duncan is free. There isn’t even a slice in his serape. He stares, half-frozen with incomprehension.
Caine shrugs. “I told you: a metaphor.”
“You are the Sword.”
“Yeah. And you just pulled me from the stone. Welcome to your kingdom.”
“My—?”
“Whose else?” Caine says. “I think we should call it Duncan’s Gate.”
“If I didn’t just now destroy the universe.”
“Well, yeah. Too late to start worrying about it now.”
On Duncan’s chest lies the wildflower garland. He gathers it to himself and stands, then goes to return the garland to the horse-witch.
“Take it with you,” the horse-witch says with a tiny hint of smile. “Girls like when you bring them flowers.”
“If you’re gonna play Poke the Bear, you better keep in mind the bear doesn’t give a shit it’s just a game.”
— UNKNOWN
I’ve been thinking about this moment, in broad outline, off and on for a long time. Before I was kidnapped by the Knights of Khryl. Before Assumption Day. Before For Love of Pallas Ril. If I had to pick a moment when it first crossed my mind, it’d be the end of Servant of the Empire—on the platform with Shanna, when Kollberg’s
emergency transfer got us Earthside in time to save my life, and in my lap I still held the severed head of Toa-Phelathon, a pompous, slightly dim old man I had murdered for the crime of taking bad advice. I was in the middle of passing out from blood loss, having a few minutes previously taken one of the worst wounds of my career, but even with night falling on the universe around me, I could see the look on Shanna’s face.
I can still see it.
We had our share of problems, Shanna and I. Most were of our own creation. We were never happy together. Never. Not when we met. Not when we married, not even when I kidnapped a god and ignited civil war and crippled myself to save her. She was in love with the guy she thought was inside Caine—the sad, suffering soul who’d forged a monster mask to defend his pain against the bleak realities of Earth.
Me? I was desperate to prove her right.
Pretending there was a decent guy lurking somewhere in the vicinity of my heart gave me a narrative I thought I could live with. I didn’t much like myself in those days.
Still don’t, really. I just don’t mind so much anymore.
Shanna and I both told ourselves—with hysterical insistence—that Caine was just an act. A character played by Hari Michaelson, international superstar and bon vivant. And on the platform, the look on her face … I was watching her finally understand that the character had been Hari Michaelson. From the beginning.
She knew the man she’d married had been Caine all along.
And even then, neither of us understood who—what—Caine really is.
Shanna became an Actress because it gave her the chance to help people, really help them. Save them. Being born into a Tradesman family meant she’d never be able to do much for people on Earth; Acting for her was the power, every day, to make a positive difference in someone’s life.
Acting for me was getting rich because I like to hurt people.
But not just any people.
I was already in my sixth straight year in the worldwide Top Ten, and Shanna’s numbers would never get her even a whiff of what Top Ten smelled like. And all this and all that and everything else and I wasn’t thinking real clearly at the time, but I distinctly recall one last fleeting thought skating across the surface of unconsciousness.
Somebody ought to burn this motherfucker down.
I thought that burn-down would happen on its own after For Love of Pallas Ril, with Kollberg’s trial and the L-Con hearings into the Studio’s abuse of contract law. I thought the burn-down would happen after Assumption Day.
I thought roasting Marc Vilo alive on real-time video would make my point. Show, don’t tell, right?
But some people are too stupid to believe even their own fucking eyes.
Including me.
I finally figured it out: I don’t like hurting people. I never did. What I like is hurting people in charge.
There’s a reason kings hide when they hear I’m in town.
I like hurting people who think they can’t be hurt. Who think that money or power or God or whateverthefuck makes them invulnerable. Invincible. Omnipotent.
I really, really like proving them wrong.
Check off a list of my Greatest Hits: Purthin Khlaylock. The Black Knife Nation. The Khulan G’thar. Toa-Phelathon. Kollberg. Toa-Sytell. Marc Vilo. Even the ones that didn’t rule anything: Berne. Dane and Blackwood. Calm Guy, Whistler, and Hawk. Adder in the Pit. Even Ballinger. Doesn’t matter: the guys I aim for are the guys who have the power to make shit better, but they don’t.
Because keeping things shitty gets them what they want.
Me too.
It seems like whenever I smoked somebody for some other reason—any other reason—the universe fucked me for it. Killing Creele put Raithe on my tail. Killing Karl bought Faith a date with Avery Shanks. We all know how that turned out. I hated Berne because he tortured Marade and Tizarre to death, down in Yalitrayya. He hated me because I did the same to his lover t’Gall.
I could go on for hours. Days. And then there’s the big one.
Ma’elKoth.
I had him beat. I had Shanna safe, I had Berne dead and Kosall in my guts. I had Kollberg by the balls. I could have left Ma’elKoth there. Should have left him there.
Instead I took his hand, and dragged him with me into Hell.
Not that he was an angel, or a saint. But he truly, sincerely devoted his larger-than-life existence to making the Ankhanan Empire a better place. He didn’t have to. He had unimaginable power, limitless wealth, a perfection of human form that you just don’t see outside of Michelangelo. And instead of kicking back to enjoy all that shit, he put everything he had achieved, everything he’d become, into a job that was not only mostly impossible but would eventually put him in the crosshairs of a homicidal sociopath with serious anger issues.
Jesus, I wish I’d left him alone.
And yeah, it was my job. That was part of it. But mostly it was because he pissed me off. Because I could break him and there wasn’t the first fucking thing he could do about it. My job was just an excuse.
And that’s why—I really think this is true—that’s why I just about drank myself to death after For Love of Pallas Ril. Because I let the fuckers co-opt me. I traded them everything I’ve ever done—everything I’ve ever been—for a nice house, money, and something resembling a normal family. I let them make me into the kind of fucker I had spent the best of my life destroying.
I left this shitty world shitty, because it got me what I wanted.
That’s about to change.
“Hari?” Gayle looks up from the pad and nods to me. “Showtime.”
All right, then. I got your fucking showtime right here.
• • •
Now I’m up against it and I still don’t know how to put words to this. There’s too much. So I start small. “It didn’t have to be like this.”
Gayle cocks his head, frowning. “What? I mean, I don’t—”
“Not talking to you.”
I raise my eyes to the moiré face shields of the Social Police anti-magick helmets. “I’m talking to you guys. And to everybody who’s watching the video link through your helmets. And everybody who’ll watch the recording. All you fuckers. Board of Governors. Social Police. Leisure Congress.
“All of you and every other poor bastard who’s gonna have to die because you brain-dead sacks of shit are too fucking stupid to make one fucking deal.”
“Hari—”
“You could have had it all. Everything. And you know it. Jesus staggering Christ, have any of you been paying attention these last twenty-five years? I have carved across the faces of two worlds proof that my word is absolute. Even my lies become truth. What I said I’d give you is what you would have gotten. All you had to do was say yes.
“That’s all. Yes.
“I would have handed you an entire fucking planet in exchange for peace between us. But peace isn’t what you chose, and peace isn’t what you’ll get.
“And thanks for that.”
I shake my head at myself, just a little. I really don’t want to go on. But I have to. People need to know. They need to understand.
“I mean it: thank you. Thank you because I am sick to fucking death of this pus-crusted open sore of a world. And I am sick to fucking death of every one of you. Because you know what this world is, and you have the power to change it. And you don’t. Because you like it this way. So thanks.
“Now I’m gonna kill you for it.”
Gayle looks like he just choked on his own tongue.
“This is not a threat. It’s not a warning. We’re way the fuck past all that. You’re already dead, and pretty soon people won’t be able to ignore the smell.
“Days from now, months, years, when your entire fucking world is burning down, somebody’s going to create a narrative to explain it. To tell people why their whole lives are on fire. This narrative will feature me as the bad guy.
“You probably already know I’m okay with that.
“Th
is narrative will explain to people that their families are dead and their world’s dying because I’m an evil motherfucker. And sure, fair enough. I am.
“The thing is, you knew it.
“You’ve known for decades just exactly what kind of evil motherfucker I am. You knew it when you made me an Actor.
“You knew it when you murdered my wife.
“You knew it when you raped my daughter, and you knew it when you ripped the eyes from my father’s face.
“You knew it twenty-five years ago, when I committed honest-to-fuck-my-ass genocide to boost my fucking career.
“You might remember how I gave warning to the Black Knife Nation. How I told them what would happen if they came after us. They didn’t believe me.
“You didn’t believe me either.
“For the record: you were warned. Again and again. I warned you in my offer. I warned you when I killed Marc Vilo. I warned you twenty-five fucking years ago, talking to Arturo Kollberg in a conference room in the San Francisco Studio.
“I don’t rescue people. I don’t do nonviolent resistance, and I don’t work to change the system from within. You need to remember what I am. What you wanted me to be.
“Remember. Remember when I come for you.
“Remember it didn’t have to be this way.”
The secmen shift their balance and adjust their grips on their power rifles just enough for me to read their body language like a fucking headline. This fucking guy—this broke-down cripple stripcuffed to a bed in a massively fortified installation that nobody even knows exists—expects somebody to believe he’s ever going to do anything other than lie there and wait to die? Yeah, right.
Maybe in his next life.
And they’re right. Except this is my next life.
I lift my gaze once more to the distorted blur of my own face reflected in their helmets. “If anybody had given my father a choice, he would have lived and died a gentle man. He believed—believes—that the use of force degrades, and eventually destroys, civil society. He believes that hands are for helping people up, not for knocking them down.