Only Ferkudi could lower the boom on himself.
A slender Parian woman dodged out of the booth instantly, shouting and waving her arms in big gestures.
“They get away?” Kip asked.
“If they didn’t with that? I’ll give them a thrashing myself,” Cruxer said.
Down in the intersection below them, though, another quieter drama was playing out. The woman Teia had seen had come to the downed spy and was tending to his wounds.
“Thoughts?” Cruxer asked.
Kip studied the woman. Teia said she’d already had bandages near to hand before anything had happened. “A spy to spy on the spy,” Kip said. “A better way to insinuate her into their ranks than just showing up and saying, ‘Hello, I hate the Chromeria, too! Can I join you?’ ”
“Good point. And see that one back there? Beaded beard, gold earrings?”
Kip grunted an assent. He hadn’t seen him before now.
“That’s the spy’s actual handler. He almost came out of hiding when Leo struck, and then he almost ran away. Now he’s just watching. I think we can call this mission a success.”
“As long as no one saw us,” Kip said.
“We’ll wait here for a bit.” Cruxer sat with his back against the bricks. Kip sat beside him.
Minutes passed, and Kip had a thought that he’d had half a hundred times before. Now was as good a time as any. It seemed that he got in trouble for the times he didn’t speak nearly as often as he got in trouble for speaking too fast. But he’d been a coward with inaction too many times.
“Captain…” Kip said. “I just… about Lucia. The assassin—the assassin was aiming at me.” He could still remember Lucia with her back to the assassin, stepping into the line of fire at the last instant. He would never forget the look on Cruxer’s face as the young man had pulled Lucia’s bleeding body from Kip’s stunned arms and into his own.
Cruxer stared into the distance. Then his mouth twitched into a sad smile, remembering Lucia. Then he was back. “I know,” he said.
“You know?”
“I went back to that alley. Recreated the murder. The target could only be you.” He shrugged.
“You’re… you’re not mad?” Kip asked.
“I’m furious. But not at you. Breaker, if Lucia died saving your life, her death may still have been an accident, but it’s no longer meaningless. Death for a purpose? What more could any of us ask? Lucia wasn’t good enough to make it into the Blackguard. She knew it, and she was just beginning to grapple with the death of that dream. She was never going to make it into our ranks, but she still died serving our highest ideals. It’s not for nothing.”
So this is why he wants me to be the Lightbringer so much. If I am, Lucia died for the most important person in history.
“But what if I’m not the Lightbringer?” It just slipped out, quiet and sad.
“Don’t you take it away from her,” Cruxer said. “It has nothing to do with that. All are equal in Orholam’s eyes: she died for a friend, a squad mate. It is our earthly task as Blackguards to die for Colors and Prisms—but in Orholam’s eyes, dying for a pauper means as much as dying for a prince.”
Kip sat there for a few more minutes. He knew Cruxer meant it. But Cruxer saw Orholam’s hand everywhere. He believed that Orholam intervened in the world constantly. Commander Ironfist saw Orholam as a distant king who could intervene when he chose, but rarely chose to do so. Andross thought Orholam had set the world in order, but hadn’t touched it since, allowing the whole system of the Chromeria and the Magisterium to become a swindle that the nobles and Chromeria had pulled over on the Seven Satrapies.
Oddly enough, the latter part seemed to be the Color Prince’s view, too.
What Gavin’s view was, Kip didn’t know. Nor did he know what the truth was.
“Captain. I don’t know if this is the time, but what do people really know about the Lightbringer? At worship that one time, Klytos Blue said we’re all Lightbringers, and I’ve spent a few hours looking up prophecy interpretations in the libraries, but they all seem to contradict each other, so I gave it up. All I got is that he’s going to restore true worship—whatever that is. He’s going to comfort the afflicted, open the eyes of the blind, throw down the altars and high places, raise up the oppressed, and cast down the wicked.”
“And kill gods and kings,” Cruxer said. He smirked.
“Gods and kings, plural?” Kip asked uncomfortably.
“I can’t remember. Of course, it depends which Seers you accept as canon. Those things are accepted by pretty much everyone. Some of the weirder Seers said, uh, can’t remember the exact phrasing, something about killing his brother—”
“Well that’s promising.” Zymun could use a good killing.
“—and dying twice.”
“I take that back,” Kip said.
“You did go overboard, and we thought you were dead, so that might count as one,” Cruxer said. “And everyone dies at the end of their life, so that could be it.”
“Or… the pirates who rescued me threw me back overboard, so maybe that’s twice,” Kip said. He didn’t buy it, though. “Great! Really helpful. Now I know I only need to die one, two, or zero more times. I may have to kill at least one more god and one more king. I do have to figure out how to heal blind people, and maybe pick up a bit about true worship.”
“Breaker, if it was easy, everyone would agree about it. A Seer sees a true vision, but they have to translate that into words, and that means into their own language, and into their own metaphors. And that’s if she’s a true Seer—there have been false ones. There are luxiats who make their life’s work of this sort of thing. Luxiats who are much better scholars than Klytos Blue, I might mention.”
“But if it’s all theological complexity and uncertainty, it’s useless! I mean, if I can’t figure out what it means, what’s the point?”
“Maybe it’s not for you.”
“I accept that, but if I were the Lightbringer wouldn’t I need…”
“No, even then.”
Kip looked at him, puzzled. “I’m… uh, not following.”
“The Lightbringer Prophecies may well not be for the Lightbringer’s benefit. They’re for everyone else. For the soldier who understands only a snippet, but it helps him hold the line. For the bereaved widow. For the young scholar, searching for meaning. What’s it matter, anyway? You’ve done pretty well so far not knowing the prophecies,” Cruxer said.
“Deliberate ignorance. I like this idea,” Kip said. He thought for a moment. “Everything we’ve said could be talking about my father. People thought he was dead when he fell into the water—” And somehow survived being stabbed with a knife that had morphed into a sword while it impaled him. Kip hadn’t told that part to anyone. They had already disbelieved him when he’d simply said his father wasn’t drowned. Who would believe the rest? Kip didn’t believe it; half the time he was convinced his eyes must have been playing tricks on him. “—and we’ve already talked about how a god being killed on Gavin’s command could well count even if he didn’t land the final blow.”
“His childhood doesn’t fit. Prophecy says the Lightbringer will come from the outside, outside the accepted or something. It fits a bas—a person initially thought to be a bastard coming from Tyrea. Doesn’t get much more outside the accepted than that. Gavin Guile is the son of Andross. He grew up here. He was groomed to take power. It doesn’t get much more inside than that.”
“Well, you didn’t tell me about that part!” Kip complained.
“I’m a Blackguard, not a luxiat. If you want to talk about prophecies, the people you should see are… well, actually they’re the last people you should see. In fact, I’m not so sure we should be including Quentin in any of this.”
“Quentin? Why not?”
“Somehow I thought it would be obvious to you. I forget you grew up in Tyrea.”
“Why wouldn’t I go to the luxiats?”
“Because if now is t
he time true worship needs to be restored, it means the luxiats are doing things so wrongly that Orholam himself is putting his hand in to make it right.”
“Well, shouldn’t they welcome Orholam moving? I mean, they’re luxiats.”
“Breaker… are you really that naïve?”
“They serve Orholam! That’s their job!” Kip said.
“Voice down.”
“Sorry, Captain.”
“We Blackguards exist to stop assassinations. It doesn’t mean we look forward to them.”
“Totally different,” Kip said.
“The more power you have, the more skeptical you’re going to be about someone coming along who wants to take all of it away. There have been false Lightbringers before. If you show up out of nowhere without undeniable proof that you are who we suspect, you might find yourself standing right at the fissure line of a schism. There have already been attempts to kill you, Breaker. Where do you think those have come from?”
One came from my grandfather, but he denied the others.
“Who else would even know you were alive?” Cruxer asked. “I don’t think the Color Prince would think you were worth killing when you first came here. If anything, you did him a favor by killing King Garadul and putting him in power.”
“Thanks for reminding me.”
“So if not him, Breaker, who?”
The Order of the Broken Eye? But they were just assassins for hire, right?
So unless there were yet more unknown enemies out there, it had probably been luxiats who’d tried to kill Kip. But luxiats? Really?
“Hells,” Kip said. More enemies.
Then he was struck by the fact that of anyone, it should be Cruxer who had such a cynical view of the Magisterium. “Captain? Doesn’t it shake your faith, I mean, if it really was the luxiats who killed Lucia?”
Cruxer looked away. “My faith isn’t in men.”
Which didn’t leave Kip with anything to say.
But that had never stopped him before. “So,” Kip said. “If I’m never going to be a Blackguard, what do you think I should be using this time for?”
“Learn to kill. Learn to lead. Learn who your friends are, and then draw them so close to you that every time someone shoots a musket ball at you, it hits one of your friends and not you.”
“That’s… that’s a horrible way to think about friends.”
“Breaker, if you become a Color or a Prism, and a thousand times more if you become the Lightbringer, you’ll no longer be merely our friend. You’ll be our lord first. It is right and proper that we should die for you. It is our purpose.”
Suddenly, Kip felt like he was locked in that closet again, covered by rats gnawing, gnawing, gnawing at him. But now the rats were cares, worries, burdens, people he could let down, people who would die if he failed, people who would die even if he succeeded. He felt sick and claustrophobic, hot and cold.
“Knowing I would die for you, how would you live if you were worthy of that sacrifice? Live that way,” Cruxer said.
“Simple, huh?” Kip asked sardonically.
“Simple. Not easy.”
They sat in silence for a few more minutes. Kip pretended to be thoughtful, but the idea was so big it couldn’t bear the weight of someone looking at you and wondering how much of it you’d processed. So mostly, he sat there and pretended to think, and felt wretched and dumb.
When they got up to go, he said, “Should we follow their route to the safe house and check up on them, or should we go direct?”
“Let’s go direct. They got away clean.”
Chapter 45
Within three blocks, Teia realized she hadn’t gotten away clean. As invisible as she’d thought she was, someone was following her. There were tricks to this, as there were tricks to everything, but figuring out if you’re being followed was one of the things the Blackguard practiced. So Teia wended her way through the neighborhoods carefully. At first when she’d split from Big Leo, she’d moved at a fast pace. Not jogging, but clearly moving with purpose. At the fifth turn, she was certain: she was being followed.
It was odd. Big Leo would be a hundred times easier to follow. But maybe they figured Big Leo would be that much more careful. Or maybe they were afraid of him. Or maybe they’d followed him as well.
The man she suspected of tailing her was small. Laborer’s clothes, dark hair pulled back tight, and ratty beard adorned with dull beads. He carried a petasos folded in his hand. He was alternating putting the hat on and taking it off to make himself harder to spot as a constant presence behind her. Not a bad trick.
He walked as if he knew the neighborhoods—not glancing around looking for landmarks. When Teia slowed and turned back toward the neighborhood they’d left as if her guard were now down, he followed. That was when she was sure he was following her.
And this is where working with a squad is beautiful.
Teia almost grinned as she headed toward their secondary ambush point. It had been Cruxer’s idea, and Teia had been proud of his deviousness. He seemed so upright and good she’d worried he couldn’t be sneaky. Goss and Winsen would be waiting to incapacitate her tail. Ferkudi would be following one minute back. Daelos would take care of helping Big Leo. Kip and Cruxer would follow Big Leo if it looked like he was being pursued.
It was the right division of labor. No enemy would be going to send a man who couldn’t fight after Big Leo. Still, the two squad members who least inspired Teia’s admiration—or in this case, confidence—had to be Goss and Winsen.
As usual when they worked in town, none of them were to draft unless it was life-or-death: they couldn’t give away who they were.
Teia came around an alley and pulled her hood up. It was a brisk winter day, so it shouldn’t be too alarming to her tail, but the hood was her sign to Goss and Winsen that she needed scrubbing. She winced, though. She’d ducked around that corner, hadn’t she?
She walked down the alley, past Goss and Winsen’s hiding places, whispering, “Black hair, Atashian beard.” Then she kept walking.
Can’t look back, Teia. Don’t give it away. She took care not to duck around the next corner, but she did stop as soon as she was out of sight. She took a deep breath and drew a flat-bladed knife. She got down on her knees and extended the blade past the corner, trying to see in the reflection if a shadow darkened the entrance to the alley.
Nothing. Nothing she could see, anyway. She needed to buy a good little mirror for this.
She waited, certain she would hear the sounds of a scuffle, or a sharp yelp as Goss slammed the piece of wood against the man’s shins as they’d planned. They would rob him if they could, too, to make it appear random, but stopping pursuit was their first worry.
Nothing. Where is he?
As soon as Teia thought the question, she knew she was in trouble. She rocked back onto her feet, taking a squatting position from the kneeling one she’d been in. She began leaping to her feet even as she felt the arms close around her.
The man yanked her backward, stopping her momentum with an arm across her chest. Her reaction was instant enough to make any Archer proud: when you’re rarely as strong as those you fight against, you learn to change the rules. Instead of trying to pull against the man’s grip, Teia pushed hard into it: he had pulled her backward, so she jumped backward, too.
Surprised, the man careened backward, and they slammed into the side of a building together, the man’s body cushioning the blow for Teia. His grip relaxed, and she dove for the ground.
The last of his grip on her arm whipped her hand into the wall, though, and as they fell in opposite directions, they were suddenly both looking at her knife, dropped on the ground.
They both jumped for the knife that lay between them, and they both arrived at the same second. But where the man grabbed for the knife’s grip as they slammed back together, Teia was already grabbing for the man’s wrist. Not finding resistance where he expected it again, the man couldn’t stop the blade as Teia helped its
upward momentum—twisting the man’s wrist at the last moment so he rammed the blade full into his own gut.
Shock lit his eyes as he felt the blade slide home, and that gave Teia the pause she needed to pluck the dagger from his fingers. Then they were pressed hard together. He reached around her back and embraced her. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and pulled hard. His breath was hot and stinky on her face.
“Adrasteia the Implacable indeed,” he said. “Bless me, goddess. Bless me!” He laughed sickly, and held her tight.
What the—Where was Ferkudi? He was her backup. Where was he?
Teia was trapped. She panicked. Her knife hand was free, and she stabbed. Stabbed, stabbed, stabbed. Not artfully, not carefully finding the angles between ribs that she’d been taught through so many hours. She was flailing, flailing, screaming, barely aware of the sound of her own voice. Her vision went red, and all the world was close and hot and unbearable.
Someone was shouting. Shouting her name. She twisted, lashing out with elbows as the man slid down her body, grip weakening, but she hit nothing.
Someone ripped the little man off her. Ferkudi lifted the man in a hug, trapping his hands down at his sides. Then he ran at the opposite wall of the alley, lowering his shoulder at the last moment and crunching the man against the stones. The man dropped in a bloody smear, falling to the dirt.
Teia spun, crouched low, feral, knife in hand.
Goss and Winsen both stood there with their hands up. “Orholam’s balls, Teia, it’s us!” Goss said.
“Wow,” Winsen said. “You killed the shit outta him.” He sounded… appreciative.
Teia looked at the dead man. He was all rags and blood now. Blood matted his hair and his beaded beard. How had he got blood in his hair? She didn’t even remember cutting his scalp. She wanted to vomit, but instead she felt cold inside. Dead. A killer.
“You have a rag?” she asked quietly. “I’m a mess.”
Goss and Winsen looked at each other, looked at Ferkudi. Shook their heads in awe at the same time. That was funny. She laughed.
A stricken look passed over their faces, like she scared them. Oh, they thought she was laughing about killing that man. For some reason, that was hilarious, too. She laughed louder. She sounded crazy.