“Who was it?” Teia asked. It was as if Karris hadn’t said anything. The girl really was battle shocked.
“Watch Captain Tempus requested you for this mission when I said I’d like you to be here. He seemed nervous, insistent.”
“Guilty, you mean,” Teia said. Then she swore quietly. “I liked him. Orholam blind him.”
“Teia, we don’t know if he’s in the Order himself. He might have been blackmailed. If we can… Teia, if we can, show mercy.”
For the first time, Teia actually looked angry. “When I trained under Commander Ironfist, and Trainer Fisk, and Tremblefist, they told me never to point a musket at a man I wasn’t ready to kill. Were you trained so differently?”
“Being ready to kill doesn’t mean you kill regardless. Point the gun, but keep your finger outside the trigger guard until you’re certain. I’m asking you to use discretion, that’s all,” Karris said.
It wasn’t fair of her. As if Teia wouldn’t use her discretion.
Teia took the rebuke, though, unfair as it might have been. She simply looked sad. “Tempus has done what the Order commanded once, how can you believe that he won’t do it again at some critical moment? A man sworn to guard your back who betrays you even once is a cancer in the Blackguard. It doesn’t matter if he’s taken oaths or not, or if he attends the Order’s secret meetings. If he obeys them, he’s one of them.”
Karris bowed her head. She’d known Captain Tempus for twelve years. “Do what must be done.”
Teia turned to leave, but as she got to the door, Karris called out to her. “Adrasteia, we have all of us fallen short.”
The young Blackguard assassin looked at her, and she was pitiless. “Some fall farther.”
Chapter 68
“They were littermates,” Conn Arthur said.
He was sitting in a charred, muddy circle of ground next to the giant grizzly’s corpse when Kip approached. If anything, Lorcan had been even bigger than Tallach. The air stank of luxin, blood, black powder, burnt fur, and bear meat. Though the corpses had already been dragged away, the ground was muddy with the blood of those Lorcan had killed before dying.
From the look of things, the bear had sought out Amrit Kamal’s bodyguard and his drafters. Nearby were four dead wights, a number of drafters, and several dozen finely equipped men and horses. They were already being stripped of their goods by Kip’s gleaners, who kept uncharacteristically silent as they went about their work.
Lorcan had not only been the distraction Kip needed, he had also wiped out much of the Lord of the Air’s leadership and protection here. The battle would have gone quite differently without him.
And the bear bore the signs of it on his body. Blood matted his fur from dozens of unseen wounds, many arrows stuck out from his hide, he had singe marks, and part of his jaw was blown off.
There was no sign of Tallach. Conn Arthur must have banished the great bear. No one wanted to see a giant grizzly feeding on men.
Instead the conn sat alone. There were no tears on his cheeks. He looked like a man concussed.
Kip said nothing, and the Mighty said nothing. Kip gestured and they moved away, some setting up a perimeter, checking the dead—the scene of a just-finished battle was not a safe area. Cruxer stayed nearest, but only close enough to protect him, not close enough to listen in.
After a time, Conn Arthur found words again. “My father was a great hunter. After we were born, my mother had something burst in her head and was sickly as long as we knew her. She got pregnant again when me and Rónán were six. Twins again, boys again, identical again, but she had not the strength for it a second time. Or perhaps we’d broken her somehow. They lived for a while, but she could give no milk, and they refused cow’s or sheep’s or goat’s milk no matter what we did. My father rode many leagues to find a wet nurse, but they refused her, too. Perhaps they were wiser than us.”
Kip said nothing. “After that, things were different. We moved with him from our village to a little cabin in the Deep Forest. Father took Rónán and me with him one day and let me take the shot at a magnificent stag. I only wounded it, though. We tracked it to a thicket and my father went in.
“He surprised a great she-bear. She protected her cubs and he protected his. It was a fight such as none I’ve ever seen. They both died of their wounds, and the four of us were left orphans. No one in our village believed us when we said our father had fought a giant grizzly, much less killed it. None had been seen for a hundred years, two hundred maybe. They thought we were lying to make our father seem a hero. We took in the cubs. What else were we to do? Rónán and I were thirteen years old then. When our powers awakened, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to reach out to them.”
Kip said nothing.
“You have to understand. They’re still wild animals. Predators. I’ve known from the first time I touched Tallach’s mind that I might step wrong one day, and he interpret me as a threat, and he’d kill me that day. Without malice. To call it betrayal would be to call the rock you stumble on a vicious rock.
“And yet we loved them as one loves nature itself. He loves me, too, but I can’t guarantee that he wouldn’t feed on my body if he found me dead when he was hungry. Like the world, he is hard but not cruel. I have buried my mother and my father. We most of us bury our parents, unless our lot is worse and we bury our children. I’ve buried my baby brothers. Children born too soon often die. And now I’ve buried my brother and will bury Lorcan. There is nothing unique in my suffering. A thousand within shouting distance have suffered worse. The world is hard.”
And Kip knew then he had lost him.
“But I am not,” Conn Arthur said. “Luíseach, I lied to you and you forgave me. You deserve my loyalty, my service, my life itself. But I have it not to give. At the end of all things, Tallach is just a goddam bear. But I’ve seen everyone else I love die, and I can’t see him leave me, too. I can’t risk him in battle one more time. I… can’t.”
“I won’t ask you to—” Kip said.
Conn Arthur interrupted, “I have broken faith already. I have just banished Tallach. I will-cast him, compelling him to go to the deepest part of the forest, and to avoid men for the rest of his days.”
A cloud descended on Kip. It wasn’t as if it were the first time he’d seen someone succumb to battle shock, but Conn Arthur? The great, hairy, muscular colossus seemed the very epitome of strength.
“Conn Ruadhán Arthur,” Kip said quietly. “I release Tallach. He’s done outstanding service to our fight, and he’s free to go. At the end of all things, as you say, I don’t need him. I do need you. Your people need you here. Your friends need you. You’re more than your magic. Your service, your knowledge, your fierceness, your strength is needed here, and I don’t dismiss you.”
Conn Arthur didn’t look up from his seat in the mud. He shook his head. “I’m finished. Call it a resignation or call me a deserter, you decide. Hang me or give me a pack. I’m done.” He stood and looked at his hands, bloody from where he’d been holding Lorcan’s fur. “I’m sorry to cast a pall on your great victory, my lord. You’ve much to do, I know. Here’s your wife now. With news and pressing duties, no doubt. I’ll not undercut your authority by defying you in front of your men. I’ll await your verdict on the morrow.”
Tisis rode up on her little roan. She took in the scene quickly and her eyes softened, but she turned to Kip. “I’m sorry, my lord, but the gates are opening. There have been stories of some sort of conflict between you and Dúnbheo’s conn earlier? Your men are spoiling for a fight. Theirs seem to be, too. We need you. Now.”
Damn and double damn.
Chapter 69
The sky hammer came down in a crackle of lightning and fire and earthshaking thunder.
A moment before it struck him, Gavin jerked awake. He gasped, and fell from his cross-legged sitting position onto his back.
He sucked in great breaths, lying there in the darkness, his legs slowly untangling.
/> “Eat the poisoned bread,” the dead man said. “It’s your last hope. Go out like a man before you fade into your insanity.”
“What woke me?” Gavin asked.
“Holding out hope? You?” The dead man laughed. “Die, Dazen Guile, and may those you’ve harmed curse you into eternity.”
Some comfort you are.
He groped around in the darkness until he found the bread.
There had always been some part of him certain that he would escape. Things had worked out for him, always. He was a falling cat, destined to land on his feet. But this time he’d been dropped from too great a height. Landing on your feet didn’t mean anything when the fall pulverized your legs.
The pressure on his chest was suffocating.
“Do you remember your seven great purposes?” the dead man asked him.
“Uh-huh.”
“No. Really. Do you remember them all?”
“To tell Karris the truth about me, about Gavin and Dazen and Sundered Rock, that was the first one. To finally free Garriston, that was the second. After all I’d let happen to it.” He’d failed to save the city, but he’d succeeded in saving the people. It counted, maybe.
“Go on.”
“Several were for war. I knew there’d be war again. So the third was to get an army loyal to me.”
“Of course. The people of Garriston, with your old General Corvan Danavis at their head. And you held them off the table like a card to be played when no expects it.”
Gavin nodded. Seers Island seemed so distant to the conventional thinking, but it wasn’t distant anymore, because of the next goal. “The fourth was to learn to fly. That worked for me for a little while, but I couldn’t ever make a condor that could move supplies and troops across the seas. Nonetheless, in my failure, I created the skimmer, which does what I wanted anyway: I can move troops to places no one could imagine they’d show up. Perhaps as importantly, I can communicate more swiftly than any foe. The fifth goal was to undermine the Spectrum and get myself named as promachos again. That almost worked.”
“What’s number six?”
“To kill all the color wights. All of them, in the entire world.”
“For Sevastian?”
“For everyone.” Yes, for Sevastian. Eight years old and murdered by a blue.
“A grandiose plan, for a blind man.”
“No, grandiose was the seventh goal.”
The dead man was silent, but Gavin was, too.
Finally the dead man said, “What was the seventh goal?”
“You’re not me, are you?” Gavin said.
“Of course not. What, do you think you’re talking to yourself? You’re not that crazy. Not yet.”
“You aren’t a young version of me I will-cast into this cell to comfort myself. You’re something else.”
Silence for a time.
“You underestimate your old self.”
“Enough of that. I know.”
Silence again.
“What gave it away?” the dead man asked.
“When you said . ‘Raka,’ I might have dredged from the depths of a fevered brain. But ?” And you lied about white luxin, but Gavin didn’t need to tip that card yet.
“Eh, I worried about that. I was angry. I made a mistake. I hoped you’d missed it.”
“So what are you?” Gavin asked.
“Oh, Dazen Guile. Come now. Isn’t that your seventh goal? To join us?”
Gavin shivered. ‘Us’? Every word was likely a lie. Every word had been a lie so far.
But what did that mean?
Or was this a hallucination? Was this conversation even real? Or was this madness in truth?
Dear Orholam, I am finally losing it. Conspiracies and spirits? What’s next?
What could you do when you couldn’t trust even your own mind?
He tore a hunk off the bread. He wadded up the dough, rolling it in his hands and compressing it until it was a starchy bullet. He opened his mouth to toss in the bullet all nonchalant.
Wait, a quiet voice said to him.
He closed his mouth.
“What was that?” the dead man said. “Who was that? You can’t touch him! You can’t speak to him! That’s not how it works. That’s not the rules! Unless…”
Gavin was about to say something aloud, but whatever it was, he forgot it immediately when he heard a sound. Something from outside the cell.
No! I’m in here for months and months and nothing happens, and then two vitally important things happen at the exact same time?
The air changed and light streamed into the black cell like a sledge smashing Gavin’s good eye. Gavin blinked against it, putting out a three-fingered hand to block the assault, and the man turned down his lamp. Then he set it on the floor.
Grinwoody.
Chapter 70
“In the circus when I was growing up, we had this act,” Big Leo said, as the Mighty followed Kip toward the Dúnbheo gate. They hadn’t heard what Conn Arthur had said. Cruxer told them only that he was leaving.
They weren’t taking it well.
Big Leo continued, “We’d take the scrawniest kid we could find in the village, or some feeble old codger, or just the kid whose parents we wanted to please the most, and we’d pit him against my dad, who was my size now at least. Bigger. We had these funny illusions where we pitted him against my father in feats of strength, and somehow he won every time. And at the finale, my father pretends to be furious and picks the skinny guy up and sets him on a teeterboard, determined to bounce him out of the place. He jumps on his side of the teeterboard—and just slowly rises, not even fast enough to bounce him. Then my father looks at the teeterboard like it’s got to be broken. Picks it up, moves it around, sees that it’s just a plain old teeterboard: one piece of plain wood over a fulcrum.”
“Tell me this story is ending soon,” Winsen said. “The awesome wonders of the circus are too much for my provincial mind.”
“It’s going somewhere, all right? It got a little longer than I was expecting, but—”
Tisis gave a significant glance to Kip—‘Not too long, okay?’—and said, “I’ll go stall them.” She flicked the reins of her horse and darted away.
“He’s right at the climax of the show, Win, I want to hear what happens,” Ferkudi said.
“What happens? Like it’s still going on? Big Leo’s parents and that whole damn circus were killed, Ferk,” Winsen said. Always was the diplomat. “It’s not what happens. It’s what happened.”
“Thank you, High Lord Pedant,” Ben-hadad said. “We don’t know the story, so we don’t know what happens next in the time stream of the story. You can put it in any tense you want. It’s like it lives in a hypothetical fairy story land where anything may or may not happen. And we just want to find out what that happening is.”
“What? Hypothetical what?” Winsen said. “It’s a true story. Something really did happen. And it’s over, so it happened.”
“I have to admit,” Big Leo said, “it does kind of sound like you’re talking out of your ass with that hypothetical fairy story whatever, Ben-hadad.”
Ben-hadad threw his hands up. “So it’s a true story composited from many instances of a mummery act facilitated with illusions, fine. That’s totally different.”
“Yes,” Winsen said.
Ben-hadad nearly shouted, “No, it isn’t! It’s a fucking story for the purpose of illustration! It doesn’t matter if it even actually—”
“Shut it, Ben. I was damn near getting to my point,” Big Leo said. He grunted as they passed a burning pit. “I know I’ve said this before, but I really don’t like the smell of burning human.”
“I dunno,” Ferkudi said. “I mean once the hair’s burnt off, I think it’s kind of appetizing. I missed breakfast. I’m hungry. Anyone else hungry?”
One of the burning pit workers, a rag tied over his face, looked at Ferkudi aghast.
“That’s what I don’t like about it,” Big Leo said. “You
don’t remember that we’ve had this conversation before?”
“It did seem kind of fermiliar.”
“It’s our third time,” Big Leo said. “Annnnyway. Wait. I wanted to get this out of the way before we get to the wall. No, they see us. They’ll wait.
“So my father’d put the teeterboard back down and we’d play it a few different ways, but he’d wobble it up and down, see that it was a plain old teeterboard, and finally ask this tiny kid to jump on the other side. And of course we had it rigged so that my father would be blasted not just high in the air, but all the way through the roof of the tent and out into some nets outside that none of them knew about.
“Brought some people to tears the first few times. They thought he’d been killed. But eventually we sighted in the humor and he’d come back in for the applause. Great bit. Dangerous as hell. Way too easy to miss the net. My mother hated it.” He shook himself. “Anyway, that was supposed to be shorter than all that. Point is: What. The. Hell. Just happened?”
Kip sighed. Double damn and triple damn. He wanted space from this right now.
“The reaction doesn’t seem proportional to the event, right? I mean, his brother’s bear died. I had a dog die once. I was sad. And I know the Foresters enjoy their drama, but—”
“I dunno,” Ferkudi said. “His brother died not long ago, satrapy’s all tore up, maybe he just—”
“O’s mercy, don’t do it,” Cruxer said.
“—couldn’t bear it?” Ferkudi asked. “Get it? Bear it?”
“Balls, Ferk,” Ben-hadad said. “You think it’s appropriate to make jokes when a man bares his soul—”
The rest of them groaned.
“Jokes aside, I hear you,” Winsen said. “It does seem like a bit of an overreaction. When my cat Fluffles died, I grinned and bore it… Damn. That didn’t really work, did it? Grinned and beared it?”
“Now you’re beating that joke like a dead—” Big Leo said.
“Don’t…” Cruxer said.
“—bear,” Big Leo finished. “Oops.”