The Everburning City

Act 1, Part 5, Chapter 22

Cameron

He had chipped one of his knives.

Gloamtaken, a big one, had throw itself through the doorway and nearly knocked him over. Its weight had dragged his right arm down, and bashed his knife into the stone.

The tip had broken off, along with a second piece as large as his fingernail, halfway down the blade. Cam's response had been to open the damn thing's left lung from its back to its sternum.

Cameron's knife was still stuck, hilt up, protruding from the creature's fallen form like he planned to use it and mark the dead thing's grave. He wasn't going to pick it up again.

"Damn shame. That was a good knife."

"Was it?" Hendricks asked.

Cameron reached into his coat, drawing out the knife Mack had given him from Crafter Saval's luggage chest. "The quality of the steel has gotten a lot better over the last few years. That was was one of the first Foundry issue knives, only got it two years ago. No way they'll replace it with something as good. Odds are, I'll be given a metal stick that's more rust than steel."

"Strange. I thought all of the steel in the City was pretty good," Hendricks said as he stepped into Cam's path. He shifted into one of those somewhat ridiculous duelling poses, but treating his sword like it didn't have edges wasn't a bad tactic in a narrow corridor.

And it worked. Well more than half of the bodies in the hall were Hendricks'.

"That's just how it looks from how high up your childhood was. Bet even your duelling foil was high-grade spring steel," Cameron said. "Army knife's not bad, but besides that I'm down to my coldstone knives. One's a piece of garbage, and I haven't tested the other."

"You mean that one you got from Saval?" Hendricks asked. Cameron frowned at how casual Hendricks was, referring to a Crafter. Most people in the City, even standing miles away from one, would attach the honorific. Even his coworkers. "She was one of the Foundry's lead researchers. That knife has to be pretty good."

Gloamtaken started coming again. Hendricks lunged forward, extended his sword, but let the advancing Gloamtaken push its way onto his blade. One it was in about a finger length, Hendricks twisted his wrist and took a step to the side, covering the other side of the hall with his sword while the newly felled Gloamtaken blocked the path he left open.

Hendricks was getting quite a bit better. And quickly. Cam was fairly confident there weren't many people in Oversight who could touch him. Mack perhaps, and a few of the other hard, brittle veterans of his Bureau.

"We're supposed to use the coldstone knives sparingly. They can cause frostbite at a touch, if you're not careful," Cam said, as he drank from a water bottle. "All of them are also extremely brittle."

"Doubt that's true about your new one," Hendricks said, dispatching another Gloamtaken with the same technique. "Saval might have been mad, but you don't become a lead researcher at the Foundry just because you have a red coat. You need to have some real skills, and if she made that knife, you know it's something special."

Cameron frowned, and looked down at the blade. "She made it?"

"Her initials are on the blade, near the hilt," Hendricks said, dispatching another creature with an ease bordering on indifference. Cameron might have found it unnerving, yesterday, to see someone kill so effortlessly. "CS."

Sure enough, Hendricks was right. Just above the hilt, a small, slightly embellished CS was set into the blade like a pair of runes. The letters, despite being so small Cameron could cover both with a fingernail, gleamed in the light. Out of some strange habit, he let his finger try to trace the letters, and had to pull his hand away as if the blade had burned him.