Chapter 4
The Order of the
Knife did not pray, exactly, yet they revered St. Marx the Trinity-Karl,
Groucho and Harpo, great physicians from before the Age of Rust who wandered
the earth performing miracles. Yet they
were not worshipped, per se, merely studied and revered as paragons of the
Codex Hippocratis, to which all the Priestesses and Acolytes of the temple
strove to live by. It cautioned
temperance; the very first words of the Codex were “Do no more harm than you
need.”
Marne did not feel
particularly temperate as she rode ahead of the Scum Lord. Her Mother Superior had cautioned her as she
appointed her to First Knife, “Remember that the Knifeborn are our charge, from
the days of TEOTWAWKI onward. Whatever
they are, it is because we made them so.
Do what they ask and be what they need.”
She wanted to think
that the Mother Superior had not known what this task would entail, that she
was sending her newly appointed First Knife to a certainty of rape and deviant
abuse from a pack of jaded little subterranean vermin from a degenerate age,
likely followed by death at the hands of a trained killer she had known from
boyhood. But she found it unlikely. What the Scum Lord did not know in the depths
of his fury was this: the hook was in the Priestess as well, and she had no
choice but to be strung along. They were
two flopping stingfish on the same rusted stringer in a pond choked with thick
green corruption; each conspired to hate the other.
And the ugly truth is, even if Mother Superior does know
what I have faced, and am facing, it would not change our need. That
was another tenet of the Codex Hippocratis-“Greatest good to the greatest
number.” Without the miraculous potions
and needles and other sundries from the Knifeborn’s great storage vaults, the
magic of the Knife Sisterhood would crumble to dust. With that would go the goodwill of the
holdfast lords, and with that, their power.
So they did what they must. I
did not mind so much when it was just keeping records and sending foreskins,
though.
She stilled her
mind without so much as a whimper; there was much to do. The air was still cold, but the bitter
howling winds had died, and it was in silence that the two doomed fools rode
through the Necropolis, seeking the Way of the Belt. The horses were nervous, and itched to bolt,
so a steady hand was required to keep them in order. Marne was grateful for this; it was something
to focus on. She thought, perhaps almost
prayed let this ride be the last. I
can betray him if I can do it in silence.
I will armor my heart in stillness, and he will not hear falsehood in my
voice. For that was what terrified
her; the man missed so little that she feared he would smell out her treachery
immediately. And the galling fact was
that she did not know what value his life was to the Knifeborn when they
already had his seed.
For his part, the
Scum Lord seemed content to ride in silence, both hands on the reins with the kalach
slung low across his lap. He looked
pleased with himself, even though his own Codex cautioned against such a
sensation. An ugly confrontation with
the Knifeborn vaqueros at the end of the temple mouth had nearly gotten
them killed, though he knew it not. The
god-blind morons had tried to tell him that his kalach had gone missing,
whereupon he had seized the man’s balls and twisted. After a surprisingly short amount of time,
the kalach and the lord’s other gear had all re appeared, as if by
magic. And yet even that affront was not
enough for the Scum Lord; in the course of manhandling the gunslinger he had
taken the fool’s automatic pistol and tucked it away. None of the sullen looking vaqueros had
even troubled him for it as he walked away.
Perhaps he had a right to look pleased; it had been obvious even then
that no man among them was his match.
Yet it would have spelled his death, had that conclusion not already
been forgone.
The sun was rising
higher in the sky as they reached an on ramp to the Way of the Belt. Her staff, with its tiny surges of magnetism,
had already cleared the decrepit hulks from their path on the way in, but
she flicked the controls of the weapon to ready it anyway. The gleaming steel staff, five feet long with
solid metal at both ends, had even been returned to her with a full charge-a
surprising courtesy. But the package
slung across her horses’ rump was far more important, a massive bag almost five
feet long and marked with the cross of the torture victim god of the
ancients. It contained vials and pills
and needles all marked with words of power-PENICILLIN AMBIEN V VANKOMYCIN
ZYDRATE. By your name I summon you, she
thought bitterly. These will save
more lives than I take this day.
Greatest good, greatest number. I
must remember that. They rode
between the shattered wrecks in silence.
Then, putting a
cruel end to her nascent hopes of survival, the Scum Lord spoke. His voice, with that barbaric Tex Arcane
accent that spoke of cunnilingus and home (the priestess did not know it, but
the two were mixed in her head) was rough with the hard travel. “That song, m’lady,” he said,
uncharacteristic politeness in his tone.
For a moment he groped for words.
“The Rising of the Moon. It is a
traditional nursery song in my lands. A
relic of the Ancients, I am told.” They
reached the top of the elevated road, and began picking and weaving their way
among the fire carriages while mummies stared out at them with gaping eye
sockets. “I have never heard it sung
anywhere else.”
In her heart, she
cursed and railed. The song, why did
he have to bring up the stinking song?
And why did you have to sing it? To
keep from screaming, she focused on the path before them, nudging her mare away
from a twisted pile of jagged metal. She
did not turn to look at him; too much sincerity in a lie, she had found, was
the same as not enough. “I have spent
many years serving your holdfast, my lord.
I hear many songs sung in the fields and stables by your get.”
“Aye,’ he said, and
she heard a match being struck behind her.
There was the smell of sulphur and then tobacco. “Yet it is unusual, to hear a song of one’s
childhood so far from childhood joys.
And rarer still from a Priestess who can pick up the words so
well.”
Her back prickled
in anticipation of a storm of bullets from the man’s chattering weapon. She almost fancied she could taste the blood
in the back of her throat already. One
misstep here, and this man will kill me.
They are all killers in the Tex Arcane, and he rose to his lordship by
being the greatest of them. I must never
forget that. Not even allowing
herself a deep breath, she lied boldly.
“Music is one of the hidden blessings of the Sisterhood, my lord. Not all of our records are of births and
deaths and chopped foreskins.” There was
an edge of frost in her voice; hopefully it served to mask her terror.
Apparently he had
no answer to that. They rode in silence
again, a blessed relief. Occasionally
she stopped to brush her charged staff against an obstacle, sending it
squealing and grinding out of her path in a cloud of bitter rust. But the dead city made little noise, and it
appeared to her that…
“Something up
ahead,” said the man behind her suddenly, and she reigned her horse in too
sharply. The well trained beast did not
rear, though it shuddered, and she lowered her free hand to stroke the animal’s
neck. “Something cracking. Sounds like rock, or…” The lord fell silent. Then she heard the cold snap-chunk of
a kalach bolt being racked. “Stay
down, m’lady,” the lord said, and she thought this is it, he already hears
his doom approaching. She lowered
her head on instinct-a holdfast instinct for survival that was ingrained even
deeper than her training as an Acolyte of the Knife. Peering out past the wrecks, she strained for
a look at the horror she had unleashed, but saw nothing.
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