Caine's Law (48 page)

I just want it to be over.

“I never …” Angvasse gives another of those faint sighs, and starts again. “I never knew my father.”

For a while I watch her, while memories of Dad—some good—unspool behind my eyes. I can’t imagine my life without him.

Eventually all I can say is, “I’m sorry.”

She nods, pensive rather than melancholy. “But I did know love, in my uncle’s house. I was loved.”

I match her nod. “So was I. In my father’s.”

“Somehow it seems that should make things easier.”

“Yeah.” I stare out into the darkening snow. “Except it’s mostly the opposite.”

Sometime later, a subtle shift in the light draws her eyes. She glances over her shoulder, then heaves herself to her feet. “He’s coming out.”

I don’t look. “Okay.”

“I’ll withdraw.”

Which tells me which him we’re talking about. “Okay.”

The crunch of his footsteps is uneven, almost erratic—like he keeps stopping but then keeps deciding he should come a little closer. “That was … quite the conversation.”

I don’t bother to answer.

“The Ravenlock … well, he’s an extraordinary creature. What he proposes to do …”

“Did you agree? Are you going through with it?”

“I … didn’t want to.”

“But you will.”

“What we talked about—”

“Yeah, I know, all the lore and shit. You can write a fucking book.”

“He says I
will
write a book.
Tales of the First Folk
.”

It’s kind of like being slapped on the top of my head. Now I do turn and look without knowing really what the fuck I’m expecting to see. All I get is his big shadow silhouetted against the campfire behind him … but I can read his posture like most people read road signs. “You want to give me that again?”

“We didn’t talk about lore,” he says. “The lore—he put it in my head. He says it’s the only thing I’ll remember. He says I’ll wake up back in Thorncleft with the worst headache I’ll ever have, but I’ll be able to transcribe everything he gave me. Which will get me my doctorate and a professorship, and marriage to the woman I love. And a son.”

“So you were really talking about—”

“My future.
Our
future.” His silhouette shifts like he wants to reach for me but he’s afraid I’ll rip his arm off. “He told me who you are.”

Fuck.

My head gains a couple tons.

“I’m not your son.”

“He explained that. May I sit?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Want me to spell it?” Now I’m on my feet and I don’t remember getting up. I don’t remember getting angry either. “No, we’re not having this fucking conversation. We’re not gonna talk about my childhood. We’re not gonna talk about Mom. We’re
not
.”

“But—” His shoulders droop, and his weight rocks back on his heels. “But I don’t even know your name …”

“Fucking make one up when I’m born. It doesn’t matter. You won’t remember me when you wake up, and by tomorrow morning I’ll be fucking dead. Leave it alone.”

“Dead—? He didn’t say anything about anyone … well, dying
…
”

“I’m not anyone. I’m
anything
. And I shouldn’t say dead. It’s more like destroyed.”

“I don’t understand …” His palms turn upward as though he can cup comprehension and drink it like water from his hands. “A thousand primal mages. Twenty-five thousand ogrilloi. And me. For a day, and then he puts me back where you got me from, with a book’s worth of stories in my head. That’s the deal. He didn’t say—”

“He didn’t say anything about the True Relics?”

“What, the Sword and the Hand? Well, yes, he said they’ll be destroyed in the ritual—but they’re mostly symbolic, aren’t they? Like pieces of the True Cross, or the Holy Grail.”

“Not symbolic. Metaphoric. It’s not the same thing.”

“Of course it isn’t, but I’m not sure about the pertinence of the distinction you’re making here.”

“It’s pretty straightforward.” I wave a hand toward Angvasse, a dim ghost-shape in the snow. “Angvasse there. You probably got to know her a little on your way up here. Notice anything strange about her?”

“Beyond being a superhero?”

“She’s not human. Neither am I.”

“What is she, then?”

“She’s the Hand of Khryl.”

“The hell you say.”

“And me …” A little sigh, and little shrug, and an all-over weird-ass chill from finally, after all this time, actually saying it out loud …

“I’m the Sword of Man.”

K
ris kneels in the snow, his head lowered. He neither moves nor speaks, and from his face drip tears that chime faintly as they strike ground, where they become a scatter of glittering gemstones.

Duncan watches him for some considerable time before he turns his head back toward Caine. “You’re the Sword of Man?”

“Maybe.” He shrugs. “A lot depends on who you let draw that blade from your chest. Those conversations with the Ravenlock might be among the consequences. Besides, the Sword-of-Man thing—remember how I was talking about metaphors? I think it’s close enough to say I might be—potentially—a physical expression of the same metaphysical energy that the Sword of Man expressed.”

“Kind of a mouthful.”

“It gets worse from here.”

“He’s just warming up,” the horse-witch says. “He thinks that the more words you use to explain something, the better you understand it.”

Duncan lifts an eyebrow at her. “A little hard on him, aren’t you?”

She smiles. “He likes that in a woman.”

And when he looks at Caine, the killer wears a smile so fond and happy
and playfully wicked all together that Duncan finds himself smiling with them. “He probably gets that from my side of the family.”

“Of course.”

“Hari …” Kris is there, a hand on Caine’s shoulder.

Caine rises, and Kris gathers him into an embrace. “Whatever happens, Hari, thank you for this. No matter what. Just to … see my family again. Just once. To see them whole and hale … it means more to me than I can say.”

“You’re welcome,” Caine says. “It gets better.”

“It does?”

“You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.”

“The … project … you asked my father to attempt … did he succeed?”

“Dunno.”

“It’s one of those, then.”

“Yeah. We’ll find out when we try. It’ll work, or it won’t.”

“The Power you hope to Bind, to control the
dil T’llan
 … what is it?”

“I’m not telling.”

“Hari—”

“No. Sorry.”

“You told me once that there were only three people you ever really trusted. One of them was your father and the other two were me.”

“Still true.” He nods toward the horse-witch. “Except now it’s four.”

“Four?”

“Five. You remember Orbek.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Six. Avery Shanks.”

“Oh, come
on
.”

“Seven. Raithe.”

“Raithe?”

“It’s complicated. Look, I didn’t tell any of them either, all right? All I need from you is a yes or a no. Go or no go. What you saw? I can make that real.”

“You treated Rroni very badly.”

“Yeah, and I paid for it.”

“You were very cruel and demeaning. And you thought worse than you said.”

“Soliloquy. Not thought.”

Kris nods, and a gentle smile takes over the sadness in his face.
“Rroni … I suppose it might be worth allowing to happen. Just for your astonishment when he kicked the shit out of you.”

“I wouldn’t go
that
far—”

“He beat you like a rented mule he rode to an old-fashioned country ass-whuppin’.”

“All right, all right.” Caine waves a hand. He’s done playing. “You need to take this seriously, Kris. You need to think it through. It’s not a choice you get to take back. And you’re just about the only person in recorded history who can say ‘Caine, don’t do that,’ and have the slimmest chance I won’t.”

“I can’t imagine why I would say no.”

“That’s because you haven’t thought it through. The issue for you here isn’t my plan. It’s not what I want the Ravenlock to do. Succeed or fail or something in between. The issue for you is what I did by accident.”

“By accident?”

“I got in a fight with your brother.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Rroni’s got skills. He also had an assload of sharps that ended up with my blood all over them.”

His eyes pop wide. “Your blood …”

“I asked you if you’d take back the worst thing you ever did,” Caine says darkly. “What’s in my blood?”

“Oh, my heart …” Deliann’s knees buckle. Caine catches him and helps him sit down instead of fall down. “Rroni …”

“Yeah. So entirely due to my own fucking stupidity, I potentially infected the most sought-after whore in Ankhana with Pallas Ril’s countervirus to HRVP.”

“He’ll never catch it at all …” Deliann whispers. “Ever …”

“Yeah. Neither will Kierendal, or Tup. Or Toa-Sytell. Or anyone else. And after Torronell meets you thirty years later, you take him back to Mithondion …”

“Oh, my god.”

“You understand this isn’t exactly good news. When you get to that village, all your friends will already be immune. Hell, the feyin in the village might be immune already. They might never get it in the first place. No HRVP outbreak might mean you never kidnap J’Than. I never recognize you. Caine never returns to Overworld. And there’s no way to know what comes after that.”

“Hari, my god—my god! You could
unhappen
Shanna’s
murder
!”

“Maybe. There’s no way to know. This is what the Giant Brains at the Monasteries call an acausal loop. Curing HRVP before anybody here catches it might mean Pallas Ril never creates the countervirus in the first place.”

“What happens then?”

“Nobody knows for sure. There are theories. People think most likely the unhappening will itself unhappen … though there are complications there too, and basically nobody agrees with anybody else. Best case? She or somebody else still creates the countervirus for some other reason, and the rest of the shit goes close enough to the previous events that we end up more or less here.”

“Except my family will be alive. My people.”

“They might die from something else.”

“Deliann.” The horse-witch gives him an infinitesimal
don’t worry
headshake. “There are better best cases.”

“Don’t help.” Caine scowls out into the snow like something’s wrong. “Kris, we’re up against it. Yes or no.”

“Up against it? Up against what?”

“It’s stopped snowing.”

Duncan twists his neck to look around. Not only has it stopped snowing, there is grass softening what had been naked rock, and wildflowers uncoil new blossoms toward the sun.

“Company.” Angvasse sounds grim.

“Oh, you think?”

“Caine. I await your word.”

“Don’t wait. If this goes south, nail that bitch to the fucking ground. I’ll sort it out later.”

“Hari—Caine,” Duncan says, “what bitch? What’s happening?”

“The gods have found us. They’re sending an enforcer. To stop us. To kill me, probably.”

Angvasse puts on her helm. “You shouldn’t have spoken Her name.”

“An
enforcer?
Are you in danger? Are we?”

Up from the grassy earth spring saplings that creak and groan as if in agony as they twist upward, flowering and leafing and multiplying into the distance: hickory, birch, and elm and maple and walnut and oak, and the escarpment has become a glade filled with green, sunbeams, and birdsong.

“Um, yeah.” Caine sighs. “It’s my wife.”

“Late wife,” the horse-witch says.

Now in that glade a Presence arises, gathering Itself of sunlight and blossom and the dark earth rich with every life returning, and here She is in the midst of them.