Chapter 61
Kip could feel fear trying to paralyze him, but fear was slow. Fear could only perch on his shoulders and spread its black wings over his face if he gave it a place to roost. It flew around his head, stabbing its bloody beak for his eyes, but Kip was faster. He burst inside.
He ran into something as he stepped through the torn door. Something yielding and invisible. Not something. Someone.
Kip’s weight did something useful for once, and he fell forward, staggering into Janus Borig’s house and knocking over the invisible figure. He saw the flash of a trouser leg through an open cloak, as the man tumbled over a shattered bookshelf.
There was a small explosion of cards. The man must have had his hands full of them, and as he hit the ground, they went everywhere.
Then, in a rustle of cloth, he disappeared.
Kip jumped to his feet, slipped on the trash on the floor, and saw dead bodies. Armed men, perhaps half a dozen, all uniformed in black with a silver shield embroidered on their chests. Janus Borig’s guards. All the dead were her guards. They hadn’t killed anyone in return.
The sound of steel being drawn cut through the muted hiss of the rain and wind outside.
Kip widened his eyes to the sub-red spectrum—and the invisible man snapped into focus. Cloaked but still radiating more heat than his surroundings. He was walking straight toward Kip, not bothering to lower his own center of gravity. Kip must look like easy meat.
Looking around frantically like he had no idea what was going on, Kip waited until the cloaked man stepped closer. Apparently the cloak only concealed what was beneath it, so the man had only a short sword, and he couldn’t lift it until the last second or it would be revealed, hanging in midair. So the man walked forward, sword point down.
When the man was within two paces, Kip screamed. He leapt toward the man and to the side, left arm sweeping in a block that batted the man’s sword arm even as it came up, and his right hand burying his own dagger in the man’s chest.
Sub-red was bad for making out detail, or Kip was just clumsy, because his feet landed on books and apple cores and flew out from under him. He lost his dagger.
He popped back up to his feet, the battle rush making him shake. The invisible man was now very much visible, flopped on his back, arms wide, unmoving, Kip’s dagger staked straight through his chest.
Kip looked around frantically. Janus had had a thousand muskets in here. Why couldn’t he find any of them now? Nothing seemed to be on fire now, though the smell of smoke was heavy in the air. He also smelled the resinous, fresh cedar smell of green luxin. They’d smothered fires with luxin. Fires. Janus Borig had said she’d booby-trapped the cards upstairs. Maybe she’d laid traps down here, too.
“Vox?!” a woman’s voice shouted from upstairs. “What was that?”
Snatching up his dagger from the dead man, Kip charged up the steps, as stealthy as a rhinoceros falling onto a crate of porcelain. The woman was standing at the wall of cards, pulling them down, sticking them into a wooden case with dividers, but she was already looking alarmed when Kip came into her view. She dropped the case onto a table and pulled her cloak around herself.
Without noticing, Kip had let his eyes go back to normal vision, and he saw the briefest glimpse of the upper room. Janus Borig lay in a bloody heap by her desk, dead. One smooth section of the wall had been broken open, revealing a hiding place that must have held cards or other treasures, and half the wall was bare.
The shimmer came toward him, and he relaxed his eyes. The invisible woman became a warm glow, coming fast toward him, raising her short sword at the last second. These assassins must be used to easy kills, because when Kip dodged, she was so surprised she didn’t even try to adjust. He spun as he jumped past her and lashed out.
His dagger brushed something and then pulled through. Kip thought—hoped—that it was the side of her neck. He crouched low, out in the middle of the room.
“You’re a sub-red,” she said. “Always hated sub-reds.” She shimmered back into visibility. She was a petite woman, blonde hair and pale skin, blue eyes made mostly green by drafting. Eyes narrow, face like a ferret. Her hair was pulled back into two braids. One of them had been cut halfway through by Kip’s dagger. She drew a pistol.
Kip snatched up Janus’s little chair and threw it at the assassin. She jumped aside, but had already pulled her trigger. The gun roared, its sound amplified in the small room. A series of loud whines, one on top of the other, rang out as the lead ball ricocheted off the walls.
The woman cursed and grabbed her leg, either hit by the bullet or faking it. Kip had no idea how badly it had wounded her. She threw the pistol at him, missed, and then attacked him with the short sword.
Her blade wasn’t a fencing weapon by any means. Short and broad, it was meant for stabbing the unsuspecting, and making sure that single stab was lethal. Kip’s blade was almost the same length, but narrower, sharper, and held by a much worse fighter and a much bigger target.
But the woman was hurt. Kip got into a knife fighting stance, trying to remember everything his trainers had ever said. The assassin might be feigning that her injury was worse than it was to lure Kip into doing something stupid.
Patience. If she was hurt, she’d do something reckless to try to end the fight quickly.
“People will be here any second,” Kip said. “You might as well—”
She lunged at him and he batted her short sword aside and punched her in the face with his ruined left hand. At least it made a good fist—and good contact. She staggered back, wobbling a bit on her injured left leg.
If he’d followed hard after that strike, he could have ended the fight there, but he was tentative, worried she was tricking him.
She recovered, nose streaming blood, weaving. Maybe exaggerating the weaving a little.
“Every guard captain in five blocks has been bribed,” she said. “And you hear that?”
Kip wasn’t sure what she was talking about. Oh, the thunder.
“That means no one who’s heard the shots will think anything of it. You’re going to die here, fire boy.”
“Why’d you do it?” Kip asked. Stalling. He could see a bloodstain spreading on her dark trousers. The ricochet had hit her.
There is no cheating in war; there are only survivors and victims. Trainer Fisk had pounded those lessons into his class. Blackguards weren’t taught to duel; they were taught to kill.
Kip was no knife fighter, but he was stronger than this woman, especially as the blood loss weakened her. Their slow circling had brought him back within reach of the stool.
“Orders,” she said. “And who the hell are you, so I can report who we killed?”
“Kip Guile,” he said.
“Guile?”
Kip hurled his knife at the woman. It was never a good idea to throw your knife, unless you know how to throw knives. Kip didn’t. But she wasn’t expecting it—and it hit her, right in her chest. Hilt first.
But she jumped back, cursing, and Kip grabbed the stool, swinging it with both hands in a great arc.
The assassin tried to move back farther, but she was right against the wall, there was nowhere to go. Kip connected solidly, all of his strength in the blow. She tried to block it, but he crushed through her defense, breaking one leg of the stool, leaving it an awkward weapon.
But he didn’t repeat his earlier mistake; this time he followed up his attack. The room was brighter than it had been earlier, and he could see that the assassin’s arm was obviously broken, but she still somehow held on to her knife. She was reaching over to grab it with her left hand when Kip crashed into her, smashing her against the wall with his lowered shoulder.
He heard the whoosh of her breath being crushed out of her, and then they were both scrambling for her dagger.
“Niah!” A voice cried out from the stairs. “Get down!”
Kip turned to see the other assassin—the one he swore he’d killed—standing there, pistol leveled. The assassin, Niah, tried to wriggle away from Kip and dive to the floor, but he held her, absorbed by the tiny orange dot hovering above the man’s pistol—a burning slow match. It slapped down into the pan.
Kip spun with Niah, face-to-face, abandoning all thought of the dagger between them.
A boom, and she snapped her head forward into his face. Her headbutt caught him in the nose and lip. His eyes instantly flooded with tears.
“Niah!”
Kip stumbled backward, tripped, fell on his ass. The assassin Niah dropped like a pile of meat, the back of her skull exploded. What Kip had thought was a headbutt was her brained skull snapping forward into him from absorbing a bullet.
He smacked his head on the wall as he fell, not so hard that it dazed him, but it still hurt.
I’m a moron. He reached into a pocket and snatched out his green spectacles.
The other assassin, Vox, was staring in horror at the shattered head of his partner, whom he’d just killed. But Kip’s movement made him spring into action, leaping forward and kicking Kip in the head.
Kip’s shoulder took most of the blow, and he rolled with the kick, putting as much distance between himself and Vox as he could. He saw the assassin snatching up Niah’s short sword. Kip staggered to his feet, unarmed, trapped in a corner of the room, just as Vox settled into a fighting stance. From the stance alone, Kip could tell he was a warrior.
Kip’s spectacles were bent but still in his hand. No time. He’d get them on his face about the time the sword ended his life.
Both he and the assassin lunged at the same time: Vox lunging for Kip, Kip lunging for the cards on the wall. Kip raked his hand down the wall, tearing off four, five, six cards.
A gush of flames shot straight out of the wall. If Kip had been standing in front of the cards, he would have been consumed. Instead, the flames made a wall between him and the assassin, who skidded to a stop. Kip pulled on his spectacles, bending them roughly into place and sucking in green. Vox saw what he was doing, and as the curtain of flame dwindled to nothing, they both threw up an open hand to fling luxin at each other.
The assassin was faster. His hand snapped out—and nothing happened. His palm was empty of color. He had one second to look down at his own hand, surprised. Then Kip’s green missile speared through his stomach.
The man fell to the floor and wailed. “Atirat! Atirat, come back. What have you done to me?!” he shouted at Kip. He wasn’t looking at his stomach. He wasn’t looking at his death wound. He was looking at his hands.
Kip coughed. The wall holding the remainder of the cards had caught fire. Some of the cards sparked and spat, like tree sap in the blaze. Others sat placid in the flames. The fire was spreading, fast.
A breathy, labored voice said, “Kip.”
It came from the corner. Janus Borig. She was alive.
“Get the knife, you fool,” she said.
“What?” Kip asked, like a simpleton. Oh, his knife. The one he’d thrown away during the fight. That knife.
Kip had to step over Niah’s body, her exploded head still leaking blood in an expanding circle. He looked away quickly so he didn’t vomit.
The other assassin was babbling something about being unclean, unworthy, ruined. He was weeping, gasping, but he didn’t seem like he had the strength to make any trouble. Kip found the dagger and stood up into the smoke just as he heard a scream.
He flinched, ducked low, and was in time to see Vox—who had taken off his cloak and his shirt for some reason—slash open the side of his own neck. Blood fountained out, and the assassin stared at Kip, his brown eyes full of hatred, for a single moment, then he slumped over, unconscious.
What the hell?
Kip ran back to Janus. “Cloaks, Kip.”
“We can get you a cloak once we get out of here,” Kip said.
“Stupid, wonderful boy. Their cloaks.” Her voice was weak.
Kip obeyed. His brain didn’t seem to be working correctly, so he was glad to have the direction—even if the direction didn’t make sense in a house that was rapidly filling with smoke. The man had thrown his cloak off, so that was easy to grab, but the woman’s cloak was still around her body. Kip looked away as he rolled her off it, but still it stuck, and he saw that the cloak was bound to a choker collar of gold around the woman’s throat.
Focusing just on his fingers so he didn’t get overwhelmed by the gore and lose control, he unclasped the choker and finally pulled the cloak away.
He took a deep breath in the less smoky air down by the ground, and moved over to Janus Borig. He lifted her in his arms. Then he saw the cards again, and it hit him.
The precious cards lining the walls were aflame, each a little torch as the luxins within them flared.
“Don’t worry about them. Go,” Janus said.
“But they’re everything! They’re worth a—”
“Go, Kip.” Her voice was weak.
Kip stumbled down the steps, with the old woman in his arms, his head coming dangerously close to the open flames, the heat a wall.
The flames were crawling down the side of the stairs, and Kip saw garbage smoldering as they reached the ground level.
Orholam have mercy, this room wasn’t only full of garbage. It was full of black powder.
Kip pushed toward the door, having to step deliberately to get around the trash, his arms full of old lady, cloaks, and one big-ass knife.
“One moment,” Janus said in Kip’s ear right before he carried her out the door. Her voice was a whisper. “Turn a…” He turned her and she reached out toward her tobacco box.
“Are you kidding me?” Kip asked. “You want a smoke? Now?”
She rooted around in the box for one moment more, and from beneath the tobacco she pulled out a small lacquered olivewood and ivory box, only large enough to hold a single deck of cards.
“Ha! They didn’t get ’em.” She gave a wan smile. “What are you waiting for? This place is on fire.”
Kip carried her out into the night. It was storming, hard, lightning flashing, thunder shaking the buildings, rain smothering the streets. No one had noticed that the small building was on fire yet. Kip carried Janus down the street and had barely turned into an alley when he heard an explosion from her house. Then another, much bigger. He stumbled, fell, barely able to cushion the woman’s fall.
He propped her up in the wet, dirty alley, abruptly exhausted.
“I don’t suppose you grabbed my brushes,” she asked, eyebrows lifting. The rain had washed the blood from her face, but she was looking unhealthily pale, somehow luminous. “Because…” She smiled, her eyes unnaturally bright. “I know who the Lightbringer is now.”
And then she died.