So what did this bit of his will-cast self, this shadowy mirror of himself, know that Gavin himself had forgotten?
It was almost worth exploring.
Talk to a version of his old self that his old self had crafted purely to drive a prisoner insane?
Was he smarter back then, when he’d been cool and collected and healthy and patient, or was he smarter now, with all his experience and the wisdom of years?
He thought about it as he scratched at the wall. Here there would be no luxin seal that he could so easily find. He’d intended his brother to waste a lot of time—years, even—looking for that seal. He hadn’t crafted this cell that way. All the seals here were on the outside.
His brother had been ingenious and far more disciplined than Dazen had expected. Carrying with him the blue bread from the first cell—and thus defeating the hellstone draining out his blue luxin? That was brilliant, Gavin. And drafting a tiny bit of the spectral bleed blue put off under green light so he could draft in here?
Amazing, brother.
Gavin had thought his elder brother would have been terribly frustrated in here.
But that real Gavin had escaped because he could draft and he’d had a source and he’d had indomitable will.
Dazen had only the last.
After many hours, his hand started cramping too much for him to keep going.
The next day he continued. The green dead man heckled him, but he ignored him. They would learn nothing from each other, because Gavin wasn’t willing to give him more ammunition against him. Perhaps that was his wisdom, knowing that he couldn’t take much more, knowing that he was fragile.
On the third day—or after the second sleep, whichever—he’d broken through the green cell wall.
Then he followed the natural grain of the woody luxin a distance somewhat less than the span of his broad shoulders, and began again.
Four days later, he cut through again.
Five days later, he cut through one more time.
And the last side of his escape box, with the wall weakened, he cut through in three days.
Before he’d left the blue cell, he’d gorged himself on all the bread he’d accumulated, but he hadn’t managed to bring much along with him to this cell. In the last twelve days of the fifteen he’d been here, he’d eaten nothing.
That was good in only one way: it meant Andross Guile hadn’t noticed Gavin had escaped his first cell. Water flowed through each of the cells, so he hadn’t died of thirst. It was, of course, terrible because it meant he hadn’t eaten in twelve days.
His brother had done better.
Gavin spent hours etching lines between his holes to weaken the wall. After many kicks that threatened to break him before he broke the wall, the panel finally gave way.
It wasn’t large, but by wriggling his broad shoulders through the hypotenuse of that partial rectangle, he made it through and dropped into a dim gray-lit circular chamber.
The wall his brother had broken through had been repaired.
What had his father been thinking? Why go to so much effort and not set up alarums to notify him if Gavin escaped? Andross couldn’t even draft green himself, which meant immense trouble in bringing a trusted green here. But then, Andross had certainly cultivated total blind loyalty among enough monochromes to do his dirty work when necessary.
Unless Andross knew, and was cruelly just watching every step?
No, that was paranoia. Andross had seen the broken pieces of this prison and had it repaired. He would do that first because he was cautious, just in case.
Later, when he had time, Andross would try to figure out every piece of Gavin’s creation. But he would be busy in the interim, and he was an old, feeble man, after all, wasn’t he?
How had he seemed so powerful and young when he’d come down to see Gavin?
It was surely only a façade of youth.
No matter. Gavin had to get as far as quickly as he could. The green prison had cost him too much time already.
He searched the underside of the outer wall of the green orb that had just been his prison. Near the base, a section yielded.
A hidden lever popped out of the granite wall.
It took him several minutes of gathering his starvation-sapped strength to pull it.
The secret door opened to Gavin’s old access tunnels.
He poked his head into the pitch-black tunnel. Andross hadn’t discovered all of Gavin’s secrets in the construction of these tunnels, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t planted traps of his own.
Bet the torch is trapped.
Gavin froze, but he hadn’t heard it aloud. It wasn’t the dead man, it was only his own thoughts.
Not so strange, under the pressures of solitude and starvation, that he would externalize some dark mirror of himself. Still, it was too akin to madness for comfort.
Talking to yourself is one thing, not realizing both voices are yours is quite another.
There we go. That’s my voice in my head. That’s me. That’s my own sardonic sanity speaking.
Goddammit, Karris, I miss you. I need you.
Gavin blew out a breath. Then, still outside the entrance to the tunnel, Gavin reached an arm in and found the yellow lux torch in its sconce. He hadn’t trapped that one. But Andross might have trapped it. He figured that his older brother would be too paranoid to grab the first torch, and would grab the second or the third. It was still there, of course.
Gavin yanked the torch from the wall and snatched it back around the corner.
Nothing happened.
He expelled a slow breath, and examined the lux torch carefully. He peeled off the clay facing and was rewarded with soft yellow light. His own work. He could shake the torch to increase the reactivity of the yellow and get brighter light, but he didn’t bother. That would make the torch burn out faster.
He stepped into the tunnel.
Nothing.
He took his time working his way up through the spiraling tunnel, climbing, slowly climbing, but watching every step. After all his privation, he tired quickly anyway.
Andross Guile would have a trap here somewhere, wouldn’t he? But traps took time to craft, Gavin knew that well. How long had he been down here? How much time had Andross been able to take away from his other work?
Gavin made it to the second lux torch. He’d trapped the handle of that one with hellstone, though he hadn’t thought his brother would grab it. An easy trap, and one Gavin had easily avoided.
But Gavin’s slender hope that Andross Guile hadn’t found these tunnels was dashed when he found the third lux torch. That was the one his elder brother had taken and used. It had been replaced, put back perfectly in place, a mockery.
Burn in nine hells, father.
It shouldn’t have shocked him that Andross Guile was a subtler torturer than he himself had ever been. But Gavin couldn’t even imagine the rage his father must have felt when he found the rotting corpse of his favorite son in the yellow cell. And not an ancient corpse, either.
What a shock it must have been for Andross Guile, and he had never been a man to let an offense go unanswered.
If Andross hadn’t found it, there was a stash of food hidden in the chamber ahead. Cured meat, bread in airtight containers, and wine stored in new skins that should have aged well.
His mouth watered at the mere thought. Food. It was maddening to even consider it, but Gavin couldn’t hurry.
Surely I’ve learned patience in suffering by now.
He approached his old work chamber slowly. It was ten paces wide and blessedly square after the hellish globes Gavin had been trapped in. A small cot came into view, then a table.
Trap, I’m telling you, his sardonic self said. Trap.
He ignored the heckling, but he was careful where he aimed the light of his lux torch lest he spring his own trap as the real Gavin had.
He moved slowly forward. He’d concealed a tiny portcullis in the ceiling above the entrance to keep his broth
er from fleeing back down the tunnel. It was raised again, of course, reset.
He was so close. From this chamber, he could avoid the other cells, and escape. Food and wine were here. In another hidden cache just down the next hall, weapons and clothing and bandages and ropes and grapnels and every other kind of gear he might need waited.
His father would have trapped either this room, or the very last one.
The very last room would be it: that was how his father worked. But he wouldn’t expect Gavin to have weapons and rope. Gavin’s options would expand exponentially once he had those, and his strength back.
Hold on.
Gavin glanced back to the cot. Where was the table and the chair? They’d been right there, last time.
What was that sound?
Gavin quieted his own breathing, even as his heart pounded.
Was there someone in the chamber? If so, he couldn’t fail to know that Gavin was here, with Gavin waving the lux torch in the darkness.
Gavin was at every disadvantage. No night vision, no strength, no weapon, no drafting. He was paralyzed, helpless.
But just as he shook that off with his next breath, a light bloomed in the room, full-spectrum, glorious light, almost blinding Gavin’s eye.
Gavin stabbed the lux torch into a gap to keep the portcullis from slamming shut behind him, and leapt into the chamber, rolling.
It was a pitiful effort. His emaciated muscles betrayed him and he fell rather than rolling to his feet.
In the far corner, sitting in the chair, was Andross Guile. He yawned, utterly relaxed, as if he’d been sleeping.
“Son,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Chapter 34
“Hey, beautiful,” Gav Greyling said as he came onto the training pitch below the Chromeria. “Wanna go a few rounds? You’re already sweaty.” He waggled his eyebrows over deeply blue-stained eyes to show he wasn’t serious.
This again?
“Yeah, sure,” Teia said, as if she’d missed the double entendre.
“Hand-to-hand?” he asked.
Right. Not only could she never beat Gavin Greyling in hand-to-hand combat, but she wasn’t going to wrestle him while he was being a jackass.
“Rope spear,” she said.
He groaned. She practiced with a lead weight wrapped in leather rather than a spear point, of course, but he still had quite a few bruises from their last bout.
“Awright,” he said. “But I’m using a sword-breaker this time.”
Weeks had passed with no contact from the Order. Teia’s dread was only growing. Nor had Karris responded to the signals Teia had activated requesting a meeting. She must be being watched very, very closely. That didn’t help Teia’s anxiety.
She’d filled the time with work and training, both open and covert. It filled the hours, but not the loneliness. Being abruptly finished with lectures—even if they’d been mostly inapplicable—and merely working? It was discomfiting. She felt displaced even when she trained with the Blackguard.
She’d thought that her goal had always been to be in the Blackguard, but now she saw that everything she’d wanted here paled in comparison to what she’d had in the Mighty.
The rope spear was turning out brilliantly for her. It looked like and could be a distance weapon, which was excellent for a small woman. In reality, anyone who snagged the rope with a hand soon found it was also a grappler’s weapon.
Snag the rope, and you found Teia flipping another loop around your hand or head. Stagger back away from the entrapping loops, and you tightened the knot.
Then Teia was on top of you, tripping you, throwing another loop around arm or leg, and then recovering the spear blade and ending you.
They got started amid all the other Blackguards and trainees who were also practicing. This time Gav Greyling snagged the rope with his jagged sword-breaker—and threw it away from himself, a technique no one would usually try.
He rushed Teia, but her panicky jerk on the encumbered rope somehow worked, whipping the sword-breaker and spear point into Gav’s legs as he charged.
He tried to jump over the blades as he stumbled, but Teia slid sideways and flipped a loop of the rope up, catching his foot. She pulled hard as he was still in midair, and he crashed flat on his face.
She rolled onto him and jabbed the spear point lightly into his back.
He groaned, but didn’t curse. “Round to you,” he said, as other Blackguards training laughed.
As he lay on the ground with Teia’s elbow holding him down she said, “You know we can’t have a relationship, right?” Dammit, she’d said it too loud. Some of the others had overheard.
“Nrg. Who said anything about a relationship?” he said, keenly aware of the others.
They both knew how well that would go over with the commander. Fisk wasn’t as inspiring a leader as Commander Ironfist had been, but he’d been a trainer. He didn’t let that kind of stuff slide.
“I’m not your type,” Teia said.
“Oh? And what’s my type?” he asked as he stood, retrieving the sword-breaker.
She went to stand right in front of him. She put her hands on his shoulders, then slid her hands down his arms in front of everyone. “Hmm,” she said in an appreciative tone. “Your arm is so strong. But just the left. So I’m guessing this is your type.” She held up his left hand and shook it back and forth, then dropped it. “Ew.”
Everyone laughed at him, and he shook his head.
Dammit, Teia. Why’d you have to go there? She hadn’t meant to take his vulnerability and beat him with it, but she had.
“Ya know, Gav,” Essel interrupted. “I don’t know why you waste your attentions on her.” She tugged down the hem of her tunic to show off more of her substantial cleavage. Essel was famously insatiable, but she was also almost twenty years older than the young Blackguard, and infinitely better looking. “If you know where to look, you’ll find those who are always up for a good ride.”
His jaw dropped. “Really?” He couldn’t help but look her up and down. She was a veritable Atirat to him.
She licked her lips, and he was entranced. Just because it was forbidden to have sex with another Blackguard didn’t mean it didn’t happen. And if anyone would be available for something quick and dirty and temporary, it would be Essel. In a husky voice, she whispered, “Why don’t you, uh… head to the stables?”
Gavin Greyling must have blocked his hearing with his hopes, because despite everyone’s laughing at him, he said, “You’ll meet me by the stables? When?”
Gill Greyling put his face in his hands. “For a ride, you dumbass. If you’re looking for a ride…”
“Huh?” Gav said.
“I can’t believe we’re related,” Gill said as the rest of them laughed.
Afterward, though, Essel came to Teia, falling in beside her as she cooled down with some fighting forms. “He flirts with you because of how you turn him down. You know that, right?”
“Why would he—”
“Because you’re safe, Teia. He would never dream of actually breaking his Blackguard vows, and he knows you wouldn’t, either. So your rejections don’t hurt, or not as much. It’s fun to flirt with someone you find attractive anyway. You’re practice for him to hone his confidence and his approaches—which, let’s be blunt, need practice. If you like the flirtation, fine. If you don’t like it, just once, seriously, at some time when he’s not flirting with you, tell him that you don’t appreciate it. He’ll stop. But don’t—don’t you fucking dare take him to bed. There are ways to break even that rule, if—”
“The rule against sleeping with other Blackguards?”
“Yes. But not with him, not for you. He’d fall in love with you head over heels, and that is what the rules are there to prevent. Last thing we need here is tempestuous young love, and taking sides, and grand gestures, and burning resentments, and all that horse shit. That is what gets people killed.”
“Why is this my problem?” Teia a
sked. “I didn’t do anything.” She just wanted to be invisible when this sort of thing came up.
“What do you want me to say, Teia? ‘You’re the woman. Can you imagine what kind of world it would be if we let men take the lead’?”
Teia saw she was kidding but not kidding. “Fine. I’ll take care of it.”
“No, listen, because you shouldn’t go do this with a chip on your shoulder. You know the Philosopher? His concept of the zoon politikon?”
Teia shook her head. “I attended my mistress’s physical training, not her tutoring. My owners didn’t want a slave girl to think I might be an equal to their daughter.”
Essel waved that away; it was a discussion for another time. “We’re social animals, Teia. All of us. Without a community, we can’t reach our proper end, our telos. We can’t become who we’re supposed to be when we’re alone. Those without a community become monsters. We can get stuck looking for a freedom that doesn’t exist, because when you’re part of something, the weakness of others puts a burden on you. Maybe even an unfair burden. But you’ll put unfair burdens on your community, too. And let me be blunt. You do. You’re inexperienced, you’re uneducated, you’re color-blind, you’re short, and you’re weak. So in this thing, you’re going to help Gav Greyling. Not because you’re the woman, but because you’re human. You’re a Blackguard. And our community, this precious little thing we have, helps each other grow and become the best us we can be. And maybe he’ll never help you back, but one of the rest of us will. Or maybe we won’t, and you’ll go through life with your ledger slightly unbalanced. If you’ve got complaints about things being unfair, take them to my friends who died at Garriston in one fucking unlucky cannon shot.
“It’s not fair. But so what? There was a scholar—more of a dramatist, really—who said, ‘Hell is other people.’ He was right, and he was a fool. Heaven is other people, too.” She smiled apologetically. “Sorry. I kind of gave it to you right between the eyes there, didn’t I?”