Those aren’t nightmares. Not for me. When the scrape of iron on iron wiped away blood and screams and sucked night back inside my head, I was sorry to wake up.
That’s the permanent carnival of me.
I rolled onto my side. Slanting sunlight through the barred window loaded my shoulders with an extra quarter century.
The outer door swung open. The first armsman through went left, the next went right, and the third came up the middle: pro style. Each of them had one of those fancy riot guns at slant arms to go along with the morningstars that swung from their belts. Each of them had a forefinger resting lightly on the guard alongside the trigger. Each of them had creases on windburned faces and the lizard eyes of veteran killers.
They wore full-length byrnies and studded steel caps that the afternoon heat must have made resemble walking around with their heads in frying pans. The one in the middle stopped in front of the bench and let the riot gun’s business end sag. The muzzle didn’t quite cover me. Not quite. “On your feet.”
This day was slipping from crummy toward downright fucking grim. “I just woke up.”
The armsman stepped back and racked the slide on his riot gun. The muzzle shifted, and the finger slipped through the guard, and I felt a decidedly cold twinge in my testicles. Which was where the muzzle now pointed. “On your feet, friar.”
“Or what? You’ll shoot my nuts off?”
“Or you will insult my office.” A new voice, from outside the still-open door: mellow and friendly, traces of a Jheledi lilt making it as deceptively light as the top notes of a pipe organ. “Freeman Shade. Please rise.”
A reluctant sigh swung my legs over the edge of the bench. I was too old for this big-dick horseshit anyway. Still, I couldn’t help deadpanning the armsman when I stood up. “A boy likes to be asked, dumbass.”
Must be something in the Boedecken air. Or something.
Through the door ambled an exceedingly ordinary-looking Knight, below average height-a full hand shorter than me, and I’m not a tall man-well into middle age, thinning hair above a round, kindly face. The Sunburst of Khryl on his cuirass looked shrunken compared with the volume of the chest it didn’t manage to cover. A cloak thrown back over his pauldrons was shimmering white only as far as his waist; below, it was splashed the same muddy reddish brown as his greaves and sabatons. A greathelm he carried in one hand was casually passed in the direction of the nearest armsman as he came in. The armsman blanched as he desperately shifted his grip on his riot gun and nearly dropped them both. The Knight didn’t appear to notice.
His eyes were warm and brown, and sparkled with some secret amusement as he flicked a finger at the other armsman and waited for him to close the outer door.
The cell felt a good deal smaller.
“Freeman Shade,” he said, “I am Tyrkilld, Knight Aeddharr. I would be the Knight Householder for the Riverdock Parish.”
“Would you? It’s damned swell of you to come personally to welcome me to town. I’m sure you’re a busy man.”
“Oh, that I am indeed.” The Knight chuckled. He blinked as though surprised to find himself standing there. “And to deliver a welcome is exactly why I have come.”
“In your Khrylsday-go-to-Tourney armor too.”
“Well, that’s but to impress the worthy.” He crossed his wrists and unfixed the jointed fasteners that clipped his gauntlets to his vambraces. “No one expects to find your name numbered upon that gloried roll, freeman.”
Knight Aeddharr passed the gauntlets to another of the armsmen. His hands were large and square. The fingers on those hands were short and thick and looked about as nimble as wagon spokes. And about as soft.
This was going to suck.
“So.” I let my knees bend a couple degrees, quadriceps and femoral biceps taking the weight that shifted slightly forward, onto the balls of my feet. A breath or two of Control Discipline goosed my adrenals. Everything went bright and slow. “This is where the gloves come off. As it were.”
“Of a certainty.” Tyrkilld opened those large square hands and spread them in a man-to-man shrug of regretful necessity. “A mailed hand may well slay before you reveal the truth that God and the Justiciar require.”
“You can just ask-”
“Oh, that I intend. Pynhall.”
I saw it coming: the Control Disciplines had my reflexes hyped enough for that. I saw it clearly. Not that it mattered.
Just a slap. Open-handed. A wide flat palm that crawled with eldritch blue witchfire came up from hip level to the corner of my jaw like it had been shot from a rifle. I didn’t even manage to blink before the room whited out and thunder crashed into the tolling of the vast carillons that call the Beloved Children to Assumption Day worship at the White Cathedral and I bounced off something hard and fell on something harder and when the world darkened back into existence and the bells began to fade to distant chimes I was on hands and knees on a stone floor, staring at a blurred and doubling pair of jointed steel sabatons caked with brownish-red mud, and Christ my head hurt and I gave it a shake that made it hurt worse and I said-
“Wow.”
“Do we understand each other, now?”
I didn’t risk another shake of my head. It might fall off.
“You have a gift for expressing yourself.”
“You’re not the first to notice, freeman.” The Knight took a respectful step back. “You may wish to rise. It’s best to be on your feet, and a fair distance from the nearest wall. I’ve good control with Khryl’s Hand, but there’s little help for you on the secondary impact.”
I made it to one knee and looked up into the Knight’s kindly round faces: all three of them. I closed my eyes, opened them, squinted, and there were only two. “Am I gonna live through this?”
“That remains to be seen. Up you go, then.”
My legs’d never make it. “I’m good right here, thanks. How do I get this to stop?”
“Tell me what I want to know.”
“And if I can’t?”
“I’m certain you can.”
“Then we have a problem.”
Armor creaked with Tyrkilld’s shrug. “You do.”
I looked around for something to lean on. The movement threatened to split my skull. “And if I Challenge?”
“We’ll take that as understood, shall we? What are you, grade six?” Tyrkilld chuckled indulgently. “Strike at your own inclination.”
“Oh, sure. Thanks.” Leaning with both hands on my bent knee, I let a few more breaths siphon clarity back inside my head. “This is about Orbek?”
“Was that a mystery? The Order of Khryl and the Civility of the Battleground have an interest in the dealings of this ogrillo of yours.”
“He’s not my ogrillo.” A hand to my temple helped squeeze the silent thunderstorm back down inside my skull. “He’s my brother.”
“So you told Knight Khershaw. And Our Lord of Valor still hears no lie.” Tyrkilld shook his head amiably. “With you a Monastic, too. An Esoteric. Likely an assassin.”
“I’m retired.”
“Not so long ago, you would have been mortal enemies.”
“We were. We got over it.”
“How this came about must be an interesting tale-”
“A long one, anyway.” Too fucking long. “It tells better than it lived.”
“-but it concerns me not at all. My first interest lies in what you will tell me about Freedom’s Face.”
“I’m sure I’d have a snappy comeback if my head didn’t hurt so damn much. What the hell is Freedom’s Face?”
Tyrkilld sounded honestly regretful. “Pynhall’t.”
I saw it coming again. Didn’t matter this time either. It was the other hand. Which also didn’t matter.
I was on my back when my eyes twitched open. The muscles on the right side of my neck were being chewed away by rabid squirrels. I couldn’t see them. Or hear them, or touch them when I pawed weakly at the pain. But they were enthusiastic little fuckers. Industrious.