The Mighty needed to sink into this country. They needed to learn the people and the land. They needed friends if they were going to stop the White King.
“First thing we need to do,” Kip said, “is divide the loot.”
“Loot? The flour?” Big Leo asked.
“When you’re hungry in the forest and someone gives you gold to snack on, I want you to think about that tone,” Tisis said.
“The loot is ours,” Kip said. “We bled and died to take the White King’s flour—”
“The White King’s flour?” Sibéal asked.
“He stole it and the villagers had no way to get it back, did they? That said, after Conn Arthur makes clear that all of the flour and the barge itself is ours by the laws of war, he’s going to take only two sevs for each of us—little enough that each of us can add it to our pack without us having to add wagons, and enough that each of us can split our share with those who join us soon. Then the conn finds whoever is in charge from the village, makes clear what is ours, and then gives all the rest and the barge itself to the village. We want to bind the survivors to us, make them grateful. Make them spread good stories about us. And for Orholam’s sake, make sure they hide the barges until the Blood Robes are long gone.”
Sibéal Siofra nodded her head. “Saving their lives means a lot. Saving their livelihoods may mean more in the coming days.”
Orholam’s balls, Kip thought, they were going to need things like food and weapons and shoes and tents and cooks and everything else. Eight people could live off the forest without its slowing them too much. Especially with the skimmers. They wouldn’t be able to do that with the conn’s hundred and twenty added to that. And if even half the Cwn y Wawr joined? That put them at nearly two hundred and fifty souls. And two hundred and fifty mouths. Five hundred feet.
At that number, skimmers became a huge headache. With every new one they built, the quality got worse, the speed of the whole group got slower, and the likelihood of either losing one into enemy hands or having a spy steal their secrets magnified. That could have consequences for the whole war, not just the Mighty’s raids here.
Then again, what use was an advantage you were too afraid to use?
“Things are going to change,” Kip said. “It’s already started. We’re going to grow, and we’re going to learn, and we’re going to fight. We’ll always have this.” He gestured to the circle of the Mighty. “It’s always going to be special, but it’s going to change, too. For good”—he nodded at Tisis and Sibéal—“but for ill, too. So tonight let’s tell stories about Trainer Fisk, and Ironfist, and Goss and Daelos and Teia, and the battle we just fought, and how Ferkudi totally cheated in our placement fights—”
“Yeah,” Ferkudi said. “Wait—what?”
“And tomorrow, we go back to war.”
So they swapped stories and embellished a few, and were called out half the time. And mostly Sibéal and Tisis were silent. They understood. It was a wake for the boys’ childhood, which had been dying for a long time.
Tisis told about Kip’s initiation and how she’d sabotaged him. Sibéal in particular looked stunned, though Ferkudi did, too. How he’d missed that story, Kip had no idea.
“That’s how you met? And yet here you sit, together? Married?” Sibéal asked. “I can’t believe he would forgive you such a thing.”
“Kip has a remarkable ability to see the difference between an adversary and an enemy,” Tisis said. She patted his arm, and her eyes were warm.
“Oh, gag me,” Ben-hadad said.
“With wine!” Cruxer called, tossing a sack at him.
Deadpan, Kip said, “After I saw her naked, I’d forgive her for anything.”
She smacked his arm, her face bright in the firelight.
“He does have a penchant for grabbing on to something and not letting go, doesn’t he?” Cruxer said.
“Tell me about it!” Kip said, showing off his burn-scarred left hand.
They laughed, and Cruxer said, “I was thinking about Aram, in our placement fights, and how you grabbed him until he nearly broke your neck!”
So they segued into those stories: who had been better than expected, how Teia had placed everyone before the fight, how Kip had bulled his way all the way to fifteenth place, and how Cruxer had crushed Aram’s knee to disqualify him and get Kip into the final fourteen.
And suddenly the fire was rainbows of color because of the tears swelling in Kip’s eyes. But he didn’t avert his face. He didn’t stand and go hide in the dark as he would have not so long ago.
“Wine making you maudlin?” Big Leo asked, trying to let him play it off.
“No,” Kip said, and the circle went silent, all of them looking at him. “I had no friends growing up. I was the addict’s boy. The fat boy. Made fun of, beat up, the butt of jokes. The best of the townsfolk merely pitied me. I was taken on, but not taken in. I steeled myself to that. Accepted that I would always be alone. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, not even my mother’s, who hated herself for her failures more than I ever could. I was lucky, really. In a city, I’d have been pressed into a gang or taken by slavers.
“It shouldn’t have been any better with you all. I was fat and awkward and only had a place because my father had demanded it for me. But you accepted me. For the first time in my life, you made me part of something.”
“Not just part of it,” Cruxer said. “You’re the Mighty’s heart.”
Kip grinned. For some reason, being called the Mighty’s heart was far more meaningful than if Cruxer had called him the head. “I would have called you the heart, Cruxer. Maybe you’re the spine or the guts of us, then.”
“Well, if neither of you is the head, I guess I must be,” Ben-hadad said.
“I’m obviously the left hand,” Winsen said. “I’ll come outta nowhere and slam ya.”
“That makes me the right,” Big Leo said. “You might be on the lookout for me, but that doesn’t mean you’re gonna stop me.”
“Well, what’s that make me?” Ferkudi said. “A foot?”
The Mighty looked around the circle at each other, and then they all answered in unison: “The ass.”
“The ass?!” Ferkudi said.
“So what’s Tisis?” Cruxer asked.
Oh shit. Kip remembered the nickname, apparently at the same moment a blushing Cruxer did. Teats Tisis. Cruxer opened his mouth to apologize.
“Well, obviously—” Winsen said.
“—she’s the charisma,” Kip interjected.
“And… Winsen gets to live,” Tisis said flatly.
They grinned. Crisis averted.
Maybe the wine had gone to Kip’s head, but he wanted to say this: “I came from all that. But now—” He choked up, but no one said a word. Tisis squeezed his thigh, being a support. Kip said, “Now I have this? I’m risking my life to do something that matters with people I love? This is the best night of my life.” He spoke through the tears, and looked at them each in turn. A few eyes glimmered with tears in return. “Thank you. I love you all.”
Then he shot a wink at Sibéal. “Except for you. I mean, I’m sure you’re nice, but I barely know you.”
They all laughed, and Kip looked down at his hands. “What the hell, why are my hands empty? Can’t any of you bastards share with a thirsty man?”
“Hear hear,” Ferkudi said, reaching out an empty hand enthusiastically, trying to grab a wineskin from Big Leo, who was pointedly guzzling it so as not to share. Ben-hadad grabbed it away from Big Leo and handed the skin across, ignoring Ferkudi, but Tisis intercepted the skin.
“Uh-uh,” she said. “You come with me. I’ve got something better for you than wine.”
There were cheers and hoots as she took him by the hand and led him into the woods.
He wasn’t drunk—he’d been enjoying the stories and the camaraderie too much to want to dull it—but the wine and fellowship and the good-natured teasing made all the world warm for the fifty paces it took for Tisis to lead him to w
here she’d set up their tent.
“You set up our tent away from the others on purpose?” Kip said.
“Uh-hmm. That was… one helluva kiss this morning,” she said.
And that snake in his guts was back.
Orholam knew he wanted her, but every time they tried, she ended up furious or crying or both and then apologizing and then offering to pleasure him. At the top of Kip’s list of things that filled him with erotic desire was not a weeping, furious, guilty mess of a woman.
Although if things went on this way much longer, it was going to have to do.
Pained, he said, “You want to try again?”
“I want you…”
It took Kip a few moments to realize that maybe that was a complete sentence. “Oh, well, yes, I want you, too—”
“… to shut up.”
“Oh, I thought that was a full—”
“And kiss me.”
“Ah. That. That I can do!” Kip said.
“Kip.”
“Yes?”
She stripped off her tunic and chemise together. “The lips?”
As she slid into his arms, her skin warm and the night cold, it took him a moment to process the words. “Yes?” Kip the Lips? No, it was Kip the Lip. What did she—
“Are not for talking.”
He had no idea what she meant, but found he didn’t mind much as their lips came together.
The moments blurred in the welcome haze of intertwined fingers and intertwined limbs and the cold night driving them into their tent, where they made their own warmth.
And damn, it was a small tent. He was giddy, laughing aloud as she struggled to strip off her trousers and belt and underclothes and nearly knocking over the tent poles—she hadn’t ever set up a tent before. Not that Kip was so dumb that he was going to criticize how she’d set up the tent.
And then with a flapping of her feet like a fish on the shore, she finally kicked her trousers off her feet. Her long blond hair had fallen over her face, but Kip’s giggle died in his throat as she rolled up on her side toward him and brushed her hair back.
She sidled into his arms, and he bifurcated: part of him kissing, caressing, enjoying—and another part pulling way, way back into fear and cognition.
Orholam, are you out there? I know some men beg for a favor when they’re in terror of dying. This is way more serious than that. Look. Here’s the deal: I’ll serve you forever if you’d just Please Don’t Let Me Trigger a Card Now.
Blacking out or blanking out would be the quintessential Kip maneuver. With his luck, there was no way he could just enjoy himself like a normal man. No, Kip always had to do things backward. He was the one who’d gone to battle not having had sex with his bride. He was the fat kid who’d somehow made it into the Blackguard. He was the privileged bastard. He was…
Not paying attention.
Until she pulled his trousers down and pulled her lips away from his, kissing down his chest, lower.
One half of him took over all of him, utterly.
The wrong half.
He froze up. All mental. All awkward. All fear. It was all going to go sideways. Again. Another failure. He knew it.
She paused and looked up at him. But her gaze was patient, not frustrated. “Let me do this.”
“I want to, but…”
“Let me do this,” she said firmly. “Not just for you. For us. We need this.”
“It doesn’t seem fair.”
“Oh, my husband, you beautiful soul. It’s not fair, but that doesn’t mean it’s not good. A marriage breathes, and every exhalation is giving, and every inhalation is taking. It can’t live without both, Kip. So… just… breathe.”
So he did.
Breathing, he decided pretty much immediately, felt amazing.
Chapter 38
“I thought you’d humiliate me,” Gavin said. He didn’t move. He still thought it. He scanned the room. His father was leaning back in his chair, and the table was covered with food. Meat, dried fruits, sweetmeats, cheeses, bread, nuts, two flagons, two fine golden goblets. Gavin could hardly bear to look at it, and could hardly bear not to.
“Humiliate you? By springing a trap on you? Like all your others? What would that prove? That I could outthink a prisoner with no weapons, no tools, and only the light I’ve allowed him? That’s not exactly a challenge, is it?” He hesitated. “Or are you really still trying to prove how smart you are? Is that what all this is?”
There was no answer.
“Come. Sit,” Andross said. “This wine shan’t stay chilled forever.” Indeed, there was condensation on one of the glasses.
He’d not been here long, he was saying. Just long enough to have plenty of time to wait for Gavin. He’d predicted him that perfectly.
Andross tilted the goblet and inhaled the scent with relish.
“Marvelous. Oh, wait. Was this the one I poisoned, or the other?” He picked up the other glass and drank. “Ah, that’s right, I poisoned neither. What trivial games you play, boy. How unworthy you are of my name.”
Gavin didn’t move. It didn’t make sense. His father had taken such precautions last time. Why simply let Gavin step within striking range?
“You fucker,” Gavin said.
That was the humiliation. Gavin was so weak, the old man didn’t fear physical violence from him. And Gavin couldn’t draft. He had no power Andross need fear, neither martial nor magical nor mental.
Andross grinned, as if pleased that Gavin had figured it out. “You know, I made a mistake with you.”
“More than one,” Gavin said.
Andross continued as if he’d not heard him. “I thought you’d found this prison. I had no idea you were so insane that you’d made it. I didn’t realize the truth until you broke out of the blue cell. Then it became obvious. And of course you’d not have made a prison without designing ways for you yourself to escape.”
“I am my mother’s son,” Gavin said. Orholam have mercy, that food. His whole body ached for it. Not the hunger of the belly, but the deeper hunger felt in the throat like thirst.
Andross’s face darkened, but he controlled himself. He said, “I propose a trade.”
“A trade?”
“There is a dignity in making bargains, and you need all the dignity you can get. You know I’ll abide by my word.”
Gavin said nothing. He was too hungry, too weak. His mind couldn’t race as fast as Andross Guile’s in this moment.
“You give me the tooth and that bit of hellstone, and you can eat your fill.”
Gavin’s heart had been an eagle, mounting on strong wings, as he’d seen the chamber before him. His father’s appearance had torn out his flight feathers. And now Andross plucked out his last hopes. Andross knew about the hellstone. He knew about it all. Wearing nothing but rags, Gavin had hidden both secrets in his cheeks, like a khat-chewer. Gavin’s hopes plunged to earth, flapping wildly, helplessly, uselessly.
“Then what?” Gavin asked.
“Then you go back to a cell, of course.”
Gavin didn’t so much as glance back at the lux torch he’d stuck in the works to keep the portcullis from falling. He was weak, but it could be used as a club.
His father did look at it, pointedly. “Too far away, don’t you think?”
It was.
“Even were it closer, do you think it would be enough, against me, in your present state?”
And Gavin’s hopes plunged into the earth, ribs breaking, body smashed. There was nothing left for him.
Andross said, “Come now, sit sit sit. We have so much to talk about.”
Gavin hesitated for one moment more.
“So disappointing,” Andross said. He sighed. “It used to be your particular strength that you could see how a situation had changed and adapt to it instantly… Dazen.”
It was a horse stomping on a body already dead. Gavin had known his father had to know by now, but to hear it, to have that sick, shameful truth spoken, was more than h
e could bear.
“Three… two… one… and the offer’s expired,” Andross said. And now he was stripping the dead for loot, breaking open Gavin’s jaw to get at a gold tooth.
“But wait, I haven’t—”
“I gave you a fair chance. This wasn’t a trap. This food was here for you, and you had it. Almost.”
And now Andross was desecrating the dead, mutilating the corpse.
The word had a resonance, here, in this chamber: ‘almost.’
But Gavin was already speaking, reacting, walking toward Andross. For may not the desecrated dead rise as vengeful ghosts? “I want you to know, father. I didn’t know if I could really go through with it and kill Gavin. But then I realized I wasn’t murdering him, I was freeing him from the nightmare you’d pulled him into when he was just a child. You took him away from us and destroyed the boy he was. I was freeing him from your corruption. It was a mercy killing.”
Rage washing over his face, Andross snapped his fingers and light flared from a wall back and to Gavin’s left.
Fiery letters appeared, spelling out ‘Almost’ in Gavin’s own hand. The very sign he’d used to taunt his brother into his trap.
But how had Andross triggered it?
Gavin didn’t wait. He lunged toward the old man.
An egg of red luxin larger than his head hit him in the face and blew him off his feet.
Gavin fell flat on his back and pawed at the sticky pyrejelly covering his face, spitting, trying to breathe. He barely opened his eyes in time to see Andross standing over him, one hand aflame.
With the combustible goop on his face, if Andross brought that fire close, Gavin would burn to death.
But his father checked himself, extinguished the flame, and merely hit him with a right cross.
Gavin’s head bounced off the floor and his limbs went limp. He fought to recover.
He heard a clang as Andross used luxin to hurl aside Gavin’s lux torch from where it was blocking the portcullis. But there was no clatter of the portcullis dropping to the floor.
Andross cursed and shot a flaming missile at the rope holding up the portcullis.