Caine's Law (34 page)

“Yeah? For real, or for excusing why he kicks your ass so bad?”

“Both.”

“Who’s he when he’s at home? I like to know when I kill somebody famous.”

“All I know is he’s Monastic. Esoteric, and good at it. I rode with him half the month and never caught a whiff. Fucker never broke character. Never. Even tonight, he made the climb without using his right arm. Look at my eye to see how well that arm works. But he played wounded, because he knew I might be watching. Hell, he played wounded for
days
. He knew that was how I’d recognize him, and he knew that being underestimated is a shitload safer than being mysterious. That’s quality work. This guy’s a motherfucking artist.”

“One of yours, you think? Like Dane and Blackwood?”

Fist shook his head. “I would have heard of him. Probably would have met him. Listen, I’m gonna need his boots.”

“In a minute. First you tell me how this guy’s such a motherfucking artist and still you beat this motherfucking artist guy.”

“I didn’t beat him. You did. I admit it, okay?”

“Yeah, and you have to admit it later too. In front of witnesses.”

“I will,” he said. “You saved my life.”

“Second time this month, hey? Ties my personal best. How do you get him out from cover?”

“If he hadn’t been beating me to death, I’d have thought of it sooner.” Fist gave an irritable wave toward the crossbow that lay pinned under Tanner’s chest. “He’s a little too attached to his tools, that’s all.”

“Nice crossbow,” Orbek allowed. “Too bad about the chop-outs.”

“Didn’t do the knife any favors either.”

“And so now, what am I waiting to hear you say, hey? Since you live through it?”

Fist sighed. “Hell of a shot, Orbek.”

“Yah?”

“I should say
shots
. Both times. Great shots. Really great.”

“All right, then.”

“Completely pooched the pitch-out, though.”

“Hah?”

“Didn’t even nick him, Super Sniper.”

“No?
You
fuck-me try a pitch-out a hundred yards downhill in the dark, smart bitch. With a fuck-me mostly empty pistol too.”

“I’m not saying I can, I’m saying you didn’t.”

“And I’m saying screw you.”

“Don’t take it hard. There’s a rock or two down there that’ll never kill again.”

“Maybe I come back and check on you in the morning. If I can find this place in the light. Do I ever mention there’s khoshoi in these mountains? And that maybe I like this nice crossbow and want to take it with me, hey?”

“I wouldn’t,” Fist said. “Get close enough to touch it and he’ll kill you.”

“Hah?”

“I’m serious.”

“He’s not dead? He looks dead. He smells dead.”

“He’s really, really good at faking.”

Orbek rolled his eyes. “More fuck-me Monastery crap-ass.”

“Also why he’s not bleeding much. He would have killed me already, except he knows that if he moves you’ll shoot him again.”

“Maybe I shoot him anyway.”

“Let’s try talking one time.”

“You can talk him back from being dead?”

“Could be.” Jonathan Fist cocked his head. “So when you chew down to the gristle, Brother Whogivesashit,” he said, “this is all about the girl, isn’t it?”

After about ten seconds of motionless silence—long enough that he began to wonder if he might be wrong—Tanner released a long, slow sigh, and said, “Fuck.”

“I
f you move very, very slowly, he probably won’t shoot you again,” Jonathan Fist said to the dying assassin. “That can’t be comfortable.” Very, very slowly, Tanner rolled himself off his crossbow. “You’ll excuse me not getting up.”

The front of his tunic glistened with blood, black in the moonlight. “What do you fuckers want to know?”

Orbek leveled the rifle. “How about one reason we shouldn’t torture you till we get bored, then shoot you in the head?”

“Please yourself,” Tanner said. His voice was cold as the stone he lay on, and had the flattened urban whine of Seven Wells. “There’s nowhere I have to be.”

Fist sighed. “I liked you better folksy.”

“Well, whatever suits you just tickles me plumb to death.”

“Yeah, like that.”

“Maybe start with your name,” Orbek said. “Also why you’re trying to kill my little brother.”

Tanner lifted his head and frowned at Fist. “Did he say
brother
?”

“It’s a long story.”

“It would have to be.”

The young ogrillo took a step forward and peeled his lips away from his tusks. “Your
name
, fucker.”

“Orbek. You’re too close.”

He looked at Fist. “What’s he gonna do? Bleed on me?”

“Well, shit, Orbek, what the fuck would I know about it? It’s not like I know shit about
fighting
or anything. You want to put your grey leather ass inside the reach of a guy who just now came within an ace of beating me to death while armed with nothing but an empty crossbow and a bad attitude, you go right the fuck ahead. I’ll just sit over here with my broken wrist and my broken ankle and cheer you on until my fucking eyes swell shut, huh?”

Orbek glowered, but took a step back. Then another. “Guess it’s no trouble to shoot him from over here.”

“It was no trouble to shoot him from a hundred yards uphill. Which is where you need to go back to,” Fist said. “Really. Right now.”

Cords bulged in Orbek’s neck. “First he says his name.”

“Y’know, I was lying there wondering why a grill would carry knives. Didn’t make sense,” Tanner said. “But now I see you favor long sleeves, and that pretty much answers—”

Orbek snapped the rifle to his shoulder. “The next you say that ain’t your name—”

“Oh, for fuck’s
sake
,” Fist said. “Don’t you assholes realize you want the same thing?”

They looked at him. He was too tired to make a joke out of it, and some of the pain had begun to trickle through his Control Discipline. “He wants to shoot you. You want to be shot. Both of you need to back the fuck off and give me some room to work.”

Tanner looked skeptical. “What’s in it for me?”

“If you want to find out, quit fucking around.”

“Is that how you always play it?”

“Only with you. And only when I’ve got you bleeding out. Orbek, take a fucking hike. If you spot the horse-witch, let her know where we are.”

“Easy peasy. I tell my horse.”

“Your horse?”

“You don’t know this? What you say to the herd, she knows.”

“Huh.”

“You be careful, little brother.” The big ogrillo backed his way into the darkness, rifle still covering Tanner.

Jonathan Fist watched him go, then nodded to the fallen assassin. “If it’s any consolation, you are better than anybody I’ve even heard of. Not just better than me; you’re better than people
think
I am. I feel like I should know who you are.”

Tanner’s snort sounded more like a wet cough. “Only fuckups get famous.” He flicked an apologetic hand. “No offense.”

Fist waved it off. “Listen, I don’t care what your real name is—”

“You can call me Heywood, Lord Jablohmie, Marquess of Jammit and the Eleventh Earl of Upyourass.”

“Yeah, okay, what are we, twelve years old?”

“How’s your wrist?”

“Broken. How’s your sucking chest wound?”

“Oh, serve one up, why don’t you,” he wheezed. “Let’s just say I’ve got things under what our folks call Control.”

Fist nodded. “Like I was saying: I don’t care about your name, or what abbey you’re from. I’m not even going to ask about your mission, because, let’s see, we’re already through the revenge-for-your-friend story. Next would be a freelance bounty.”

“Grateful as the Young Faltane is for all your help in this difficult time, you did smoke his father.”

“And the one below that is probably a Council of Brothers shoot-on-sight for Aktiri.”

“Damned gentlemanly of you to take out Dane and Blackwood for me. And once you’re over, I get your thousand royals too.”

“Three layers of story is standard. You’ve probably got six more. Forget that shit. The only story that interests me is something like the truth.”

“Good luck with that.”

“It’s the girl. The horse-witch. You’re the one who put together the outfit—you just let Dane run it because it kept him and Blackwood occupied. Out of your hair.”

Tanner closed his eyes. “You know I won’t tell you.”

“Rounding up the witch-herd would have been your idea too, though I bet you had the Count thinking it was his; we both know the late Count didn’t have many sharp spears on his rack. Which got you an excuse to bring an assload of hardguys into the hills to watch your back while you hunted down the horse-witch.”

“She’s right about one thing,” Tanner said. “You talk a lot.”

“The legend of the horse-witch centers in the lands around Faltane’s county; the farther south I went, the more people knew about her. The shoulder wound worked out good for you—got you out of the red work, which left you plenty of time to talk to the people down there. About the horse-witch.”

“You’ve got a thing for her,” Tanner said. “I get that. Me, I like mine extra-curvy, but whatever waxes your banister, you know?”

“You didn’t make a mistake at the notch. You wanted me to know somebody was on my track, because you knew I’d make for someplace
quiet where I have backup and you don’t. You figured that place would be somewhere in the vicinity of the witch-herd, and once my pet sniper and I were out of the way, there’d be no one between you and her.”

“Charmin’ story.”

“Hangs together pretty well, given my recent guided tour through your festival of blunt force trauma,” Fist said. “Notice how I worked through that whole story without asking any questions you won’t answer?”

“And nicely worked it was.”

“I know there’s no way to force information out of you. But I’m getting to a question. I know you’re going to lie. But while you come up with your lie, there’s some shit I want you to keep in mind.”

“You must be the talkiest damn killer east of the Teeth.”

“I came up through the Monasteries, same as you. Trained for and entered the Esoteric Service, same as you. And I swore, without deception or mental reservation, our oath to uphold and advance the Human Future. Same as you.”

“Except I never broke mine.”

“Yeah, well, if I were as good a man as you are, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“This ain’t a conversation, it’s a goddamn filibuster with occasional sardonic commentary.”

“Do you get that you and me, we might really be on the same team?”

Tanner stared at him. Muscles bulged at the hinge of his jaw, and Fist could see a tightness thinning the skin around his eyes, and decided he’d better jump to the kill, because it looked like Tanner could lose his concentration sometime in the next few minutes. Once his Control Disciplines slipped he might bleed out in seconds.

“If we’re enemies … well, it’s not complicated. The Monasteries will send other guys. I’ll kill them. They’ll send more guys. I’ll kill them too, then I’ll kill the men who sent them. If I have to, I’ll kill the entire Council of fucking Brothers. I will burn down every fucking Monastery in the world and salt the earth on which they stood. Look in my eyes and tell me I’m just kidding.”

Tanner didn’t. He turned his face away, and whispered into the night. “The Monasteries are … aware … of the facts surrounding the True Assumption of Ma’elKoth.”

“If we’re not on the same side, you’ve lost nothing. If we are, you’ve won everything.”

“You have the damnedest way of interrogating a person I ever heard of.”

“I know who you’re after. All I want to know is why. What is it about her that the Monasteries want her dead?”

“It’s …” Tanner scrubbed weakly at his face with one hand. He pressed the other to two of the holes in his chest. “Look, it’s a capture, not a kill. The arrows, the quarrels, they’re all charged with Hold. Even the one I shot at you. Nonlethal.”