‘Iron White’? What a load of shit. She ought to cross that one off her list right now. Karris didn’t even dare lift her teacup, lest Teia see her trembling. The debriefing about the assassinations and Ironfist’s fury had left her more fragile than her own porcelain. Ironfist!
Ironfist, either dead now or made an enemy. Either was unspeakably terrible. Ironfist’s brother Tremblefist had, before all his training with the Blackguard, once killed five hundred men in a night and earned the moniker the Butcher of Aghbalu. Ironfist had bested that man in single combat. Him, as an enemy?
Yet how could Karris hope instead that one of her best friends had been killed in the tumult she’d triggered in Paria?
For Teia’s part, the young woman sat with her legs crossed like a lady, back straight, daintily holding her cup without a hint of nerves. Before, Karris swore she’d always sat like a man, legs planted wide, ready to launch into action. Now she’d figured out that presenting oneself as a lady is simply another game, and she was playing it as a mock.
A mockery of Karris herself? Or was it the more innocent mockery of the fine furniture and fine porcelain and, yes, even fine tea?
But the young woman’s eyes were terrible. Teia was changing before Karris, a shaking chrysalid, and Karris guessed that both of them feared what was going to emerge from that black cocoon.
“You can be mad at me for fucking up,” Teia said. “I did. But don’t you dare—don’t you dare—flinch after what you had me do.”
Something about her combative tone actually settled Karris. She knew how to deal with fraught situations, with screaming men, angry women. The mask slammed back in place. “Sugar?” she asked, lifting tiny tongs from the tray. “The Ilytians use superviolet lattices to craft a single large crystal into fanciful shapes for the decadently wealthy. This kind is called a halo.”
“Thank you,” Teia said, confused, offering her cup.
“I think it looks like a puckered arse.”
From ladylike and pretentious to vulgar. It was a verbal hip throw. Teia seemed to have no idea what to do with that.
“Which is how I feel every day, Teia. I’m making big gambles all the time. Not because I’m reckless. I’m not. But because we’re weaker than anyone knows. You loused up? Fine. Maybe so did I.”
“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.”