“Wholesale weights and measures.”
“Indeed.”
I tipped a bland wink toward the Knight Attendant. “Prepare, lest ye be weighed and found wanting, know what I mean?”
The Knight Attendant’s left eyebrow twitched. Fractionally.
“Yes.” The clerk sounded less impressed than the Knight looked. “Duration and purpose of your visit?”
“A few days. Maybe a week or two.”
“And you’re here on business?”
Maybe it was worth telling the truth here, too. “I’m here to see my brother.”
“His name?”
“Orbek.”
“Orbek Shade?”
“No.” I deadpanned the scowling Knight. “Black Knife. Orbek Black Knife. Sept Taykar.”
The Knight’s scowl evaporated into blank astonishment. The clerk dropped his pencil, fumbled for it. Charcoal crumbled in his fingers. “Oh, very funny.” He brushed at charcoal crumbs, smearing black across his table.
“If you say so.”
“What’s his name?”
I nodded at the Knight. “Ask him.”
The clerk turned, mouth opening. The Knight’s astonishment had now given way to naked suspicion. “Our Lord hears no lie.”
The clerk pointed his gape back my way. “Your brother’s an ogrillo?”
“Is that a problem?” I turned a palm upward. “Other than for my mother?”
“I, ah, I ah, I-don’t know. I suppose not, er-”
The Knight’s eyes narrowed over a mouth gone hard. “You claim this socalled Black Knife as brother?”
“How many times do you want me to say it?”
“There are no Black Knives in Purthin’s Ford.” The Knight turned away, lifting a finger clad in jointed steel. A liveried page scampered toward him, and the Knight spoke in tones too low to be heard through the general bustle.
Couldn’t read his lips, either. Call it a wash.
The page headed for the cityside door at a walk with an eager tilt of the torso that hinted it wanted to be a run.
Call it a wash with dirty water.
I pushed a sigh through my teeth. “So all right, let’s go, huh?”
The clerk looked blank. “I’m sorry?”
“Is there a law against family visits? Is there some goddamn tax to pay? Do I need a dispensation from the friggin’ Justiciar?”
“I, ah, well-no, I don’t-”
“Then stamp my fucking papers, huh? It stinks in here.”
“Freeman Shade.” That mountain of Khryllian steel and meat loomed at my shoulder. “Soldiers of Khryl are treated with courtesy. And deference.”
“Yeah?” I showed teeth to eyes as blue and empty as a winter sky while I channeled the ghost of me at twenty-five. “Hey, sorry.”
I turned back to the clerk. “Please stamp my fucking papers.”
There came the metallic rustle that is the only sound well-tended armor makes when its wearer shifts his weight; it didn’t quite bury the strangled growl the Knight failed to lock inside his throat. “Soldiers of Khryl are not spoken to in this manner-”
“No? Then I guess just now we all must’ve, what, nodded off and had the same dream?” I showed more teeth. “Does this mean we’re in love?”
Cunningly jointed gauntlets creaked with the clench of fists. “Freeman Shade, you are Armed as you stand, and your manner constitutes Lawful Challenge. Must I Answer?”
The second half of my life leaked back into me with a long, slow sigh of old-enough-to-know-better. I jammed the monster back in its vault, but I still had to lower my head before I could speak. Even at fifty, I can’t make myself back down while looking a man in the eye.
“No,” I said. “I apologize. To both of you.”
The Knight glowered into my peripheral vision, waiting for an explanation, an excuse, a Fatigue from my long journey or an I was only joking.
But I just stared at the floor.
“You apologize.”
“Yeah.” What do you want, flowers and a fucking box of candy? my young ghost snarled, but I fixed my gaze resolutely below the Knight’s chin and bit down till my jaw ached.
The Knight took a long, slow breath.
Then another.
“Accepted.”
“May I go now? Sir?”
The Knight lifted another finger, and another page scampered up. “Take the freeman’s trunk to the lucannixheril.”
“Hey-”
“Freeman Shade.” The Knight turned an open hand toward a nearby door of iron. It stood open. Down the hall beyond were more iron doors. They were closed. Each iron door had a head-high judas gate. “Wait in there. The page will direct you.”
“My papers-”
“You will not need them.”
“I said I was sorry-”
“And your apology was accepted. Wait in there.”
“Am I under arrest?”
The Knight inclined his very young, very blond head. “If you like.”
“For what?”
“Because it is my prerogative to declare you so, freeman.” His face could have been one of the walls. “As an Armed Combatant grade six, it is your right under the Laws of Engagement to Challenge my authority.” He nodded fractionally toward a sunlit opening on the far wall of the customs barn without shifting his expressionless gaze. “Should you wish to make such a Challenge, a sanctified Arena awaits through yonder archway.”
“Are you f-? Uh. You’re not.”
“The matter can also be settled here. You need only strike.”
“Strike.” I squinted at the Knight. The rules had changed since the last time I was in the Boedecken. Maybe because of the last time I was in the Boedecken.
The young Knight offered a bland smile that never rose past the temperate zone south of his arctic eyes. “If I have overstepped, Khryl will favor your cause; Our Lord of Valor is also lord of justice.”
“It’s a swell theory.” I lifted a hand to my face; a headache had begun to chew the backs of my eyes. “Have that page go easy on my trunk, will you? It’s new.”
The cell was immaculate.
Two doors, both of iron, scoured and freshly oiled; a wide barred window that let in the noonday quiet and a hint of autumn air; walls of whitewashed brick that smelled of clean chalk; comfortable cushions on the built-out brick benches along the walls; a gleaming brass chamberpot in one corner, and in the other, a small table with a pair of fired-clay beakers, an earthenware jug of cool water, a dish of dried fruit, shelled nuts, and a small plate with three different kinds of hard cheese.
Just about the nicest place I’d ever been locked up.
I’d said good-bye to Orbek. . what was it, four months ago? Had to be. It had been late spring when we made it back to Thorncleft after we settled the thing on the Korish border. Orbek got on the Ankhana train at the Railhead, going home to visit his old friends in the Warrens, he’d said.
To look up some family.
Now with the leaves turning to gold and red we were both on the Battleground, and somehow Orbek had made enough trouble that just mentioning his name bought a quiet afternoon in jail.
I didn’t waste time in worry, or energy in pacing. They’d let me out, or they wouldn’t.
After a while, I ate.
The sun fell fully on the outer wall of the cell. The brick got pleasantly warm. I stretched out on those comfortable cushions, laced fingers behind my head, and let the headache sew my eyes shut. And for a time I was twenty-five again, young and stupid and vicious, playing Beau Geste with the Black Knives in the vertical city. .
Despite what you’ve heard, I’m not stupid. I knew already what had been eating me up: that twenty-five-year-old kid. I don’t like remembering him. I don’t like sharing my life with him. I don’t like being reminded I haven’t changed all that much.
What’s really creepy is that I don’t like being reminded how much I have changed.
Because, y’know, those black screaming nightmares of blood and terror-