At the sound of her coming in, he held up a note in gloved fingers, but didn’t turn.
It read: “This one will stow the rope as soon as you’re done with it. Do not speak to him. He is not to know your identity, nor you his. He is in danger simply doing this. Leave nothing with him. You have one minute after you give him the note back before he removes the ladder.”
Teia checked that all her items were still securely stowed—minus the one crescent she’d dropped. She handed the man the note, saw the quick flash of paper being consumed with fire, and slipped down the rope to the next balcony. She rolled her shoulders. Easy.
She took the lift down to the level of the Blackguard barracks, and ran smack into Kip.
“Hey,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I got something I really need to talk to you about. Why are you wet?”
Teia did not want to talk to Kip while she was carrying a purloined shimmercloak and a dozen climbing crescents, especially because the most obvious places for Kip to take her would be either the Blackguard barracks or down to one of the training areas, where she would have to change clothes and endanger herself and her stolen goods.
“Where are you going?” she asked, ignoring his questions.
“I thought we’d go to my apartments. Like I said, I got a thing.”
“So mysterious,” she said. She meant it to come out teasing, but her fuse was a little short.
He dropped his hands as if she’d hit him somewhere sensitive. “Teia,” he said. “Please. Please?”
Kip, being serious and contrite and vulnerable? Now there’s no way I can not go with him.
She thought of the hug she hadn’t returned, and how she regretted it. Kip, you have terrible timing. The worst.
“Sure,” she said. You’re gonna get me killed.
She followed him. Halfway there, she thought she heard a scuff of a shoe on stone behind them. Glanced. Nothing.
She glanced again, this time in paryl, and saw that Murder Sharp was trailing them, invisibly. He lifted a finger to his lips, forbidding her from saying or doing anything. She wondered for a moment if she could shrug off the pack on her back and just drop it as they rounded a corner. Surely Master Sharp would have no choice but to pick it up, and maybe leave her alone, right?
But what if she wasn’t terribly adroit? What if Kip saw her acting strangely about her pack? He’d ask instantly, and then he’d get tenacious, and wouldn’t leave her alone until he knew what was inside. So curious all the time, always wanted to know what was going on with everything. He was like a bad cat.
So they walked, her dread growing, all the way to Kip’s room. In paryl, she saw Master Sharp gesture, insistent. Hell no. But there was no disobeying him, not now, not ever.
She left the door open, and Master Sharp stepped inside to join them invisibly, intent to hear every secret word.
“Finally,” Kip said. “Privacy.”
Chapter 73
“Here’s the thing, Teia. Dammit, I keep saying here’s the thing.” He heaved a sigh. “We both know I’m not going to be a Blackguard.”
“What? No, we don’t,” she said.
“Are you kidding?” Kip asked. Surely he’d been the only person blind.
“What are you talking about? Our squad’s the best in the Blackguard. Your skills are improving all the time. Breaker, get over this. You’re always worrying. You’re—”
“I’m not worried about that!” he said, like it was ridiculous. Which was unfair, of course, since he’d been worried about precisely that as long as he’d known Teia.
“You’ve been worried about it for as long as I’ve—”
“Teia, I’m a Guile. There’s no way they’ll let me take final vows. Who would they let a Guile guard? Who would they trust me with? I’ve only made it this long because the war has everyone else looking the other way. But when it comes time for vows? Probably my grandfather will spring other plans on me. But maybe the White. Maybe one of the other Colors. I’m my father’s son, and that means I have value to people I don’t even know, people who hate my family. And those people aren’t moving yet, because even though they think my father is dead, they don’t know how much Andross hates me. As soon as they realize I’m not under his protection, or—” He cut off. Orholam’s mercy, he’d almost said ‘or once my half brother Zymun shows up.’ He’d been that close to spilling it. “I’m fucked, Teia.”
“Hey,” she said, “Blackguards guard their tongues.” She glanced off to the side.
Kip rolled his eyes. “Exactly,” he said. “In other words, not me. I’m just the acknowledged son who everybody knows is really a bastard, but if the Guiles want to pretend I’m a real son, well then, they’re Guiles. They get to. Yet another reason to hate us. It was all a fantasy. In fact, I think my father got me in just to teach me how to fight. That cold, shrewd—”
“Maybe he did it so you could have friends,” Teia said. “Maybe you’re being unfair to a man who gave you everything.”
“I’m starting to have my doubts about my sainted father,” Kip said. He pushed his hair back with a hand. “Anyway. Anyway! So… I’m not going to be a Blackguard. Think about what that means.”
He thought she’d figure it out instantly. “Kip!” she complained. “I have no idea what you mean.”
He blanched, looked away, felt suddenly vulnerable, squirmed. “Blackguards can’t… Blackguards can’t be involved with other Blackguards.”
“Right,” she said, like what he was saying was trivially true. Not. Connecting. The. Dots.
Don’t make me say it, Teia.
“But if I weren’t in the Blackguard, I could be involved with someone… who is.”
“Rrrright,” she said. Eyebrow rising like coaxing a small child: Use your words, Kip. Then her hand flew up to her mouth. “Oh shit!”
Not the reaction he’d been hoping for. But in for a danar, in for a quintar. He stared at the wall. It felt like he was tearing his heart out and throwing it against that spot.
“I’m about to run out of friends and allies here, Teia. I’ve angered my grandfather to no end, and with a word, he can end my tenure with the Blackguards. And it’s not like you… you all will have your duties, which may include stopping me from, you know, killing my grandfather.”
“Kip, it’s not like we’re going to forget you.”
“No, actually, it’s exactly like that. Or worse than that. The whole point of the Blackguard is that your loyalty is to the Blackguard and to whomever the White tells you your loyalty needs to be to. With a promachos? Your job may be to kill me, just like that.” He was angry, but he wasn’t angry at her. He wasn’t being fair. He really had ambushed her. Maybe she hadn’t even thought of it. Until recently, he’d been kind of relieved to be in a brotherhood where he didn’t even have to think of relationships for a time.
“Kip, we would never turn against—”
We, she said. Not I. He interrupted, “Point is, turns out friends are a luxury I may not get. So what I need are allies. Tisis gives me that. What—”
“Tisis?”
“—I want to know from you is, is there one good reason I shouldn’t say yes to her offer?” Brusque. Being an asshole, and he couldn’t help himself. He looked at Teia, and it was like she was already receding in the distance with his hopes.
“Her offer? What? What offer?”
Had he not made it clear? “She proposed we marry.”
“Marry?!”
“It’s the only way to get a rock-solid alliance. Even a promachos can’t dissolve a marriage.”
“Are you seriously—Kip, you’re sixteen!”
“Seventeen in a few months. Ten. Ten months.”
“Marriage, Kip. Marriage. Yes, there are a thousand good reasons. Like… like… Well, I mean, you’re only sixteen—”
“I’m not looking for a thousand reasons to say no to her, I’m looking for one. Was. Was looking.” And suddenly, horrifyingly, infuriatingly, tears were flooding h
is eyes. He took a deep breath, blinked, blinked, but it didn’t matter. The tears came, and he couldn’t speak, and the tears spilled down his cheeks.
Rejection. From Teia.
Should have fucked her when you had the chance, Andross Guile said in the back of Kip’s head. And Kip was ashamed.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and his voice was level, somehow. Tight, oh so very tight and quiet, but level. “How embarrassing for both of us. I apologize. I was unfair. Please…”
Teia looked at him, totally stunned, speechless.
“Please excuse me,” Kip said. It was his room, but he had to get out. He couldn’t breathe in here, couldn’t face her for one more second. He practically fled into the hall. He went to the lifts, but there wasn’t one at this level. He flipped his green spectacles on—they hid his eyes—and drafted a hand brake. He’d never done this before, but he’d seen it done. And, to hell with it.
He attached the brake directly to one of the anchor lines, grabbed the crossbar in both hands, and jumped down the hole.
Sudden terror can apparently be quite bracing.
But the terror lasted only a second. Kip went whizzing down the shaft past alarmed discipulae and magisters. Level after level blurred past in tears and regret. He applied the brake and came to a jerking stop at his floor—the basement where he did so much of his training.
The Prism’s training room was empty. Thank Orholam. Kip threw his spectacles back into the hip case and slapped each of the color panels, flooding the room with colored light of seven spectra. Any drafting he wanted to do would be easy. He threw off his tunic and moved to the heavy bag. It took all of his discipline to warm up. Beating the hell out of the bag immediately would just sprain his damn wrists.
Whatever distance he’d gained in running from his weakness closed in as soon as he started punching the bag. Circling the swaying leather and sawdust wasn’t flight enough to get away from his stupidity. Whatever pain shot from fist to wrist to elbow to shoulder wasn’t enough agony to overwhelm the shame. What had he even been asking? How had he not seen that she was dumbfounded? How had he not taken the quiet exits her blank, stunned looks had offered him?
No. Kip had bulled ahead. Like a dumb animal. All the grace of a turtle-bear.
His fists thumped, thumped the bag, and his wrists hurt, the connective tissue crying out as he hit the bag too hard. He wasn’t warmed up yet, but he couldn’t help but hit until he crossed the threshold of pain. As if pain would blot out all else.
Why had he backed Teia into that corner, where there was nothing she could say? He’d wanted to lose her. It was the only explanation.
He tried to imagine what the right response would have been.
And couldn’t.
This was all on him. Bastard and outcast, choosing to be bastard and outcast. He hit and hit, the thud of luxin glove on leather becoming his voice. He could judge every punch by its sound, and soon he was making corrections—tightening here through the gut to put more force into the hit, foot landing just there to give him an anchor, aiming just there as the bag swung back.
But it was no escape. He’d let himself think he could have friends. That here, at the Chromeria, at the very center of all things, he could be no longer alone. But Gavin was gone, Karris was furious, Teia didn’t want him, his friends would be taken away, and he could never trust them again. Kip was to be alone, again, and this time, finally, fatally.
And what are you going to do? Cry about it? Feel sorry for yourself? Poor little Kip of Rekton, poor little fat boy.
He closed his eyes and tried to hit the bag by feel. It had always been more theoretically possible than actually possible: you knew how the bag was shaped, you knew how it swung, you knew where it was hanging, you knew how hard and where you’d hit it, so you should be able to tell where it was going to come back. Repeat. Right?
Of course it wasn’t nearly so easy. Whatever else he was, Kip was leagues from being a blind fighter.
Finally the tendons in his arms and every surface of his fists felt merely hot rather than in pain, and his muscles warm. He picked up the speed. Elbows, knees, quick combos, face. He kicked the bag, reveling in the bass, meaty thump of a perfectly executed kick.
He was going to marry Tisis. He was really going to do it.
She had done exactly what his grandfather had warned him of: seduced him into rescuing her, without ever having to resort to actual physical seduction.
And there was that damned loose stitch on the heavy bag. Still just the same amount of looseness in it there had been months ago. Dammit! Like he’d accomplished nothing.
He focused on that side, chasing it when it turned, punching it with left hooks so it would turn right and then slamming a kick into it as hard as possible.
And then he began streaming. That was the name the squad had come up with for Kip’s little trick of shooting luxin while moving in order to move faster. Streaming was, they all agreed, incredibly dangerous—and they all did it as frequently as possible. If Kip streamed luxin out of his shoulder as he punched, he could punch the bag almost twice as hard as a normal punch. Which was awesome, except that hitting something that hard would break his hand, and wrist, and probably his arm. Streaming didn’t make you tougher, it just moved you faster.
They’d had more pratfalls and collisions and collected more minor injuries than any Blackguard squad in history.
It had given them some hilarious stories, though: watching Ferkudi stream while running in order to run faster—and jetting from his shoulders, which made him go really fast for a few moments, until he faceplanted. He’d skidded, and was only losing the last scabs on his face now. Cruxer flipping into Daelos while trying to learn to leap high.
Kip had wondered aloud if you could coat your bones in solid yellow (provided you were able to draft a solid yellow) and make them unbreakable, so you could hit anything. Teia had pointed out that your tendons and skin still wouldn’t be unbreakable; Cruxer pointed out that it would be incarnitive, and thus forbidden, with the penalty being death. It was where all wights started, he said, tweaking their flesh just a bit for an advantage here and there.
Now he made a mistake by streaming red first. The advantage was that it had significant mass, so the action-reaction combo of throwing red took less drafting for an equal amount of streaming. But red wasn’t purely physical, as he should know well by now. The emotions poured through him, first among them fury.
Kick. Fury at looking a fool. Kick. Fury at Andross Guile. Kick. Fury at Gavin Guile for leaving him here. Fury at Karris and Teia for rejecting him. Fury at his own weakness.
Fury to rage to insanity.
He aimed a roundhouse kick right at that one loose, defiant stitch, and his fury crested. Hit it. Nothing. Punched, punched, punched. The world fogged into pain and stubbornness and one loose damned stitch. Kip was that stitch, waiting to be clipped or sewn up by a power greater than he. Thud, thud, thud. The bag was swinging back and forth, and Kip’s fists were a blur, a rattling drum punctuated by great streaming kicks. He was getting hot, overheating, so he drafted sub-red to cool himself, and it stoked his rage higher, blotted out pain, blotted out reason. He became pure beast, pure hatred, a roar sounding from some place deep within him.
He roared, and as red luxin streamed out of his heel so too did sub-red, and the luxin ignited. His kick was biomechanically perfect, weight to counterweight, muscles and resistance delivering a whipcrack right into the junction that was the rounded striking surface of shin and foot. But the thrust of that fire-streamed kick delivered incredible force into the bag.
There were two cracks: one felt, one heard.
Kip didn’t see what else happened because he was swept off his feet. His planted foot was expecting only so much force to rotate around it, and he had doubled or trebled that. He went down, landing heavily on his side.
He wondered if he’d broken his leg. He wiggled his foot. It hurt. He flexed it. It still hurt, but it didn’t seem to be broken. Hur
t? It hurt like, really-really-damn-I-can’t-even-swear-under-my-breath-because-I-can’t-get-a-breath-because-it-hurts-so-bad hurt.
Kip rolled over, wincing, breathing, and sat up. The heavy bag was on the ground. It had been torn loose of its chains and was lying on the floor. The bag hadn’t burst.
It had just… Fuck.
It had just fallen over.
It lay there, mocking him. He stood up. Oh wow. That really hurt. He hobbled over to it. Nope, the heavy bag had definitely not burst. The same loose threads were still simply loose.
Mocking him.
But Kip had heard two cracks simultaneously. If one had been the torn leather hanger on top of the heavy bag, what was the other one? The heavy bag slapping onto the ground? No.
The second crack had come from inside the heavy bag. Kip was certain of it.
Well, hell with it. He was already going to have to explain the broken bag to Commander Ironfist—come to think of it, he was already going to be kicked out of the Blackguard sooner or later—so what did he have to lose?
He looked over at the blue light and drafted a little blue knife. Sitting, he poised the knife over the stitching where the loose threads were.
Months of punching this thing, for one reason. All that time, trying to do one stupid thing, failing to do one stupid thing, and now he was giving it up? I really wanted to punch this bag open. Ah, well.
The bag came open in moments, and revealed… sawdust. Kip sat cross-legged on the floor and plunged his hand into the sawdust, making a mess on the floor. Already gone this far…
He only had to root around for a few moments when he felt it. A box, deep inside the middle and top of the heavy bag, where few of the strongest blows would land. Soon, he had it out.
It took his breath. He knew this card box. No, not a card box. The card box. Olivewood and ivory, just large enough to hold one large deck. This was Janus Borig’s card box, the one she’d hidden from the people who’d murdered her. The box that he’d happily given to his father Gavin. The precious wood was cracked, right in the middle, from Kip’s kick.