The tightness around his eyes eased a little: he’d been worried she would mock him or think him a pervert for falling in love with a eunuch. “Anyway, none of that matters,” he said. “I stopped serving Andross after Lytos died and—”
“Lytos didn’t just die, though,” Teia objected. Winsen, peerless archer that he was, had feathered Lytos’s heart as Lytos had helped Buskin try to assassinate Kip. “Andross Guile tried to make you stop Breaker from joining the Blackguard. You failed. Did Andross send Lytos afterwards to kill Kip, to stop him once and for all?”
Fisk shook his head. “I don’t—I don’t think so. When I confronted the promachos, he said he not only hadn’t blackmailed Lytos, he’d never even talked to him. Andross Guile said that for him to ruin a eunuch’s relationship would be like an emperor stealing a gold ring from a beggar. Such a theft changed nothing for the emperor, but by whatever improbable means that beggar had gotten that gold ring, he’d never get another one in his life. Andross said it would show a meanness of spirit to ruin such happiness, no matter how puzzling he found it. The promachos is not a good man, Teia, but I believed him. I still do. He is ruthless, but he’s not cruel for its own sake. At the same time, I can certainly believe that someone else found out our secret and used it to blackmail Lytos into doing… what he almost did. Neither of us could have lived with having been expelled from the Blackguard.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Teia asked.
“Because you know what it is to love someone forbidden you.”
Teia went cold. Fisk? Fisk had been able to see how Teia felt—before she knew it herself? She moved to object, but he spoke over her.
“I’m telling you because you’re utterly loyal to Breaker, and you stayed behind anyway. I think you stayed behind on his orders. I think you stayed behind because you’re spying for him.”
“I’m not—”
“You stayed behind because you know Breaker is the Lightbringer.”
“Excuse me?” Teia said.
It took the wind out of Teia’s sails. Cruxer believed Breaker was the Lightbringer with the fervor of a prophet. She thought so, too, but she wasn’t worried about being part of history or something grand like that. She followed Kip because he was both great and good. That was enough for her.
And it had to be enough now, because more wasn’t an option now that Teats Tisis was scabbarding his sword. Plenty of men lusted after Tisis; she was tall, curvy, graceful, and rich, with exotic silky blond hair and exquisite taste. Teia wouldn’t have forgiven Kip for falling into bed with that creature, but she would have understood it.
But Kip had married her. A total fucking stranger. Ten minutes after he’d kissed Teia, too, stirring follies she’d never known.
Asshole.
Fisk said, “I want you to let him know that I’m on his side. If he needs the commander of the Blackguard, I’m here for him.”
Teia couldn’t even decode the words for a moment.
Kip’s friends had believed he was the Lightbringer. Sure, but they were dumb kids. Kids believed stupid stuff all the time, right?
This was different. Dour Trainer Fisk believing it?
“Why would you—” she started.
“We’ve all heard the stories. It’s just that some people don’t want to believe them. ‘He shall rise from green’ doesn’t have to mean coming from the Blood Forest or Ruthgar. It could mean he starts out drafting green. One of the first glimmers of Breaker’s magical genius showed when he went green golem in the Battle of Garriston—he’d never even heard of going green golem. He intuited it on the spot. His will was so strong, he drafted a green that stopped musket balls, Teia. ‘He shall kill gods and kings’? He’s already done both. ‘He’ll be an outsider’? How much more outsider can you be than a mixed-blood bastard from Tyrea? Each of those things offend the luxiats, and all of them together make their blood boil—as it makes them furious that a Lightbringer would be necessary to put their worship right—but hasn’t Orholam’s work always offended those in power? I won’t put myself on the wrong side of Orholam. ‘In the darkest hour, when the abominations come to the shores of Big Jasper, when Hope himself has died, then shall he bring the holy light and banish darkness.’ ‘Hope himself,’ Teia. That’s Gavin Guile. He’s dead. Our darkest hour is coming. We have to pick a side.”
Teia’d heard it translated as ‘hope itself,’ but that was maybe beside the point. For some reason, Teia hadn’t thought through what it would mean for the world if Kip really was the Lightbringer.
If he was the Lightbringer, he would shake the pillars of the earth. At the Lightbringer’s coming, the pious, the desperate, the poor, the naïve, the fools, the idealistic, the young—all those would flock not to the Lightbringer, but to their hope of what the Lightbringer would do for them. To those who had nothing, he could be everything.
What had happened to those first tribal warriors who spilled out of Paria with Lucidonius? They’d become Names. They’d ruled satrapies. Men and women who’d been thralls and stonecutters and foresters and mercenaries and brewers had become luminaries and generals and High Luxiats.
At the same time, to everyone who had power now, he would be terrifying. He would bring rebellion even in the best of times. But now? At the very time the Chromeria needed a united front against the Color Prince, Kip might splinter it from within—without even intending it.
For purely utilitarian reasons, the Chromeria itself might want to kill Kip, who’d never shown disloyalty for a moment.
But those who kill their friends for the trouble they might cause don’t deserve friends.
‘Deserve’? Am I still thinking about power as if morality belongs in the same conversation with it?
Teia said, “He didn’t leave me here to spy. I decided my work with the Blackguard was what I was called to. But we are still friends. I don’t deny that. That friendship doesn’t abrogate my loyalty to my oaths, sir.”
“Not yet.”
Teia licked her lips and admitted, “It won’t. Ever. Orholam forbid that such choices ever face us.”
“But if it did…?”
“This is like you’re asking a mother if they had to sacrifice one of their children, which one they’d choose. It’s a cruel question and it won’t happen.” She prayed.
“And if it does?” he asked.
“I’ll do the right thing, sir.”
“Ha! Best answer I could imagine. Anyway, I wanted to let you know where I stand before I raise you to full Blackguard.”
“Sir?!”
“You stand vigil tonight in the Prism’s chapel. At dawn you take the oath with a few of your brothers and sisters. Your first shift as full Guard will be on the White’s detail tomorrow at noon. We’re putting some traitors up on Orholam’s Glare. I recommend you get some sleep now. It’s gonna be a long couple days.”
Teia was thunderstruck. Full Blackguard? So soon? Was Commander Fisk so pressed for new bodies to fill the details, or was he trying to use his time as commander to pack as many good people into the Blackguard as possible? She mumbled a thanks and opened the door to leave.
“He hesitated, you know. Lytos,” Commander Fisk said quietly, looking away from Teia. “At the end. Breaker didn’t tell your squad about it, but he did tell the White. Lytos changed his mind, turned away from his treason. He was moving to attack Buskin to stop him when Winsen killed him. It wasn’t Winsen’s fault, so Kip didn’t tell him. Lytos shouldn’t have been there in the first place, so Breaker kept the burden of that knowledge on his own shoulders. But he wanted the White to know. When you’re a leader, you protect the living first, but you honor the dead as you can. It’s the kind of grace I’d expect from the Lightbringer. And… and Orholam saw to it that word of Lytos’s ultimate faithfulness got to me, the one person to whom it would matter most, so I wouldn’t have to remember him as a traitor. That’s Orholam’s mercy, isn’t it?”
Chapter 10
Time is the only prison from which prison f
rees us. Gavin woke with a new sense of vigor. Of course, the light was still the same, so he had no idea how long he’d slept. He accepted his ignorance as a gift. He’d slept until he was no longer tired.
And he felt better. Stronger than last night, the pain faded from his eye to a dull throb. He felt almost his old self. Or, he thought as he stretched and became aware of it, maybe that was just his erection.
Somehow, despite the narrowness of the palanquin, neither of them had fallen off it in the night, and Marissia’s form was plastered to his. The curve of her butt was holding down what was straining to be up.
His twitch seemed to waken her. He couldn’t shift away. He’d been imprisoned nude, and with Marissia only in her light shift, she could hardly help but notice his state if he moved. Marissia knew his body like no one else in the world.
But then she made his stillness moot by shifting her own position. She hesitated, and gave a luxurious moue. She’d always loved morning sex. “Is that for me?” she asked.
It wasn’t, but it seemed rude to say so. He cleared his throat as she rolled over with impressive dexterity, anchoring a leg on his hip and looking into his face. She pulled her body close.
“You’re feeling better, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Much.”
A cloud passed over her face. “Then your father will take me away soon.”
And like every freedom, the freedom from time offered by this prison was revealed to be a lie. Gavin said, “I can pretend to be sicker than I am.”
“But we can’t know when he’s watching, so that’s hopeless, isn’t it?”
Gavin hesitated, then said, “Yes.”
She looked into his eyes with a serenity that defied sense. “He’ll kill me.”
Gavin nodded, throat thick. She was a loose end.
“Will you do me a favor?” she asked.
“Anything.”
“Make love to me.” Her fingernails brushed lightly down his back in the way he liked. But having really seen her for the first time just last night, how could he now ignore her deep currents and see only the surface?
Easily. Oh so easily.
Her eyes were hot, intense, full of longing and grief and fear. “One last time, please. Show me I meant something to you.”
Orholam have mercy. Gavin remembered the last time he’d made love with Marissia, just before he’d left the Chromeria, how he’d felt as if he were somehow cheating on Karris, though that was before they’d married. He’d rejected the guilt then: every lord kept a room slave. Most kept more than one. Gavin was downright abstemious by comparison with others, and certainly compared to others in his class.
That day Marissia had made love to him like fire, all longing and hidden rage and despair.
No wonder.
And she felt all that again now, and worse. She said, ‘Show me I meant something to you,’ but she meant, ‘Let’s blot out feeling and fear. Let’s do what we’ve always done.’ She would make love as if it would make him love her.
Marissia pulled her shift away from between them, and her body was hot against him. And not for the first time in his life, Gavin split. His body said what his will did not. Marissia’s ears had been clipped. She had been sold, even if she’d chosen it. She had been a slave, hadn’t she? She’d been treated as a slave, so that made her one, didn’t it? And slaves weren’t quite covered by wedding oaths, were they?
He owed her this. She’d made love to him many times when she probably hadn’t really wanted to. Didn’t he owe her this once?
And he did want to.
But Karris. Karris, his wife.
She would never find out. If she found out, she would understand. If she understood, she would forgive him, as she had forgiven him so many other things.
But what another will forgive is shitty ethical measurement, isn’t it? Karris would understand that she’d married a faithless piece of shit. Karris would understand that you don’t blame shit for being shit. It’s your own fault for thinking you could polish shit and find gold.
I’m tired of being shit. Of being a liar. Of being an oathbreaker.
This wasn’t about Karris. It was about Gavin and what kind of man he was.
Gavin the Liar. Gavin Get Along, who wanted everyone to love him… and quietly cheated in the background. Gavin the Gray.
Gavin’s hunger was a trumpet, blaring in his own ear. His body wanted satisfaction. It knew the pleasures of Marissia’s body. He deserved this, didn’t he? He should take what small comfort he could. Some sweetness. After all he’d been through.
If Marissia had made the slightest move to please him, had rocked her hips against him, had brought his hands to her breasts, had kissed his cold lips, he would have acted, he would have damned himself again, eagerly. He was that weak.
But she didn’t. She knew him that well. More than that, her self-control told him that she loved him that much.
“Marissia,” he said, pained.
“Karris,” she said. It was defeat. It was heartbreak. She scooted back, unhooked her leg from over his. Her face fell.
She deserved so much more.
“My oaths, Marissia. They’ve been worth nothing for my whole life. This is my last chance.”
She got off the palanquin and swallowed. “Am I always to be cast off and second best, my lord? Here at my end, is there nothing left for me?”
And then she wept. There were no corners in the spherical cell, but she huddled as far away from him as possible, knees to her chest, hiding her face. She’d wasted her whole life on him.
Where was his golden tongue now? Gavin sat up with effort, and pain lanced through his burnt eye again, leaving him breathless for a long moment.
There had to be something to say that was honest and true and comforting, but Gavin wasn’t a master of words like that.
“So you live.”
Gavin nearly got whiplash looking for the source of that oddly disappointed voice. A panel had opened in the wall, and something stung Gavin’s chest.
His one good eye took in his father in a split second. He wanted to lunge and kill that old bastard—
But he looked down. A dart was stuck in his chest, and it felt warm. So warm.
“Marissia,” Gavin said. But he wasn’t sure what he wanted to tell her, now. His thoughts were thick, gooey. This was it. The end.
“Put these on, caleen,” Andross Guile said. He stood powerful, as if he’d dropped twenty years, and packed on a few sevs of muscle. He tossed a pair of manacles over to her, utterly certain she would obey. He didn’t even see her.
Andross stared at Gavin, an intensity in his deep eyes, but he said no more.
“You can’t. I need her,” Gavin said.
“Need her?” There was an edge of dark amusement in his voice.
“Please. Please don’t kill her. I’ll go mad without her.”
“Go mad? You’re worried about going mad?” Andross said. He laughed, a free and open sound in the cell, and turned away, dismissive.
Gavin swung his legs over the side of the palanquin. He stood, wobbled, braced himself on the palanquin. The warmth had spread everywhere.
He blinked, suddenly on the floor, drool dribbling down his cheek. The dart in his chest was gone. The palanquin was gone. Carried out by Marissia and Andross? He tried to speak, but couldn’t make words.
But Marissia and Andross hadn’t left, not yet.
The last thing Gavin saw was Marissia’s tear-streaked face as she was pulled out of the prison, hopeless, broken, looking back at him for what he couldn’t give.
And then she was swallowed by the darkness.
Chapter 11
“Are we being bad?” Tisis asked.
“We’re being naughty. There’s a difference,” Kip said. The morning sun angled in through poorly sealed cracks in the walls of the captain’s cabin, emphasizing how little privacy they had. “Are you ready?”
“I better be,” she said. “She’ll be along any minute now. Take
off your tunic.”
They’d been up half the night talking. But plotting was one thing, carrying it out was another.
“Oh, I just had another idea,” Tisis said, keeping her voice low. She sat up in the narrow bed and swung her slender legs over the side. She’d put her lingerie on again after their little disaster last night, adding a light robe to her camisole and underwear. “Tunic, Kip,” she said, throwing off her robe and tossing it into a corner.
He’d seen her in beautiful underthings several times now, and she’d been nude during his very first interaction with her at his Threshing, but Kip wasn’t even close to being accustomed to seeing Tisis’s body. Before he’d known her, he’d actually kind of hated her for being so flawless. He’d thought at the time that she’d tried to kill him, and she had made him fail the Threshing. But still. Hating someone for being beautiful was kind of perverse, wasn’t it?
And he was really the last person who should hate anyone for what she’d inherited. Kip had somehow gone from the whore’s boy to the polychrome husband of the richest heiress in the Seven Satrapies—all because of his father. Of course, that he had been a hypocrite to hate her didn’t make it easier.
It wouldn’t be so bad if she were just beautiful. Even just among the squad, the young men had different preferences. Cruxer was a sucker for a pretty face and dark kinky hair like Lucia had had. Ferkudi waxed poetic about a bottom that could shake your house like an earthquake. Big Leo had wanted a petite girl, and when Teia had made fun of the obvious size differential that would create, Leo had said, ‘Yeah, petite, like you, Teia, but you know, with breasts.’
Later, in training, she’d accidentally kicked Leo in the stones. Twice.
The problem with Tisis was that she was exactly the type of beautiful Kip liked most. Skin light and exotic to a boy from the hinterlands of Tyrea, the vanishingly rare true blond hair, a huge smile, radiant hazel eyes, a heart-shaped face, and that body. Those breasts.
Kip tried not to think about those.