Grinwoody came to a stop in a small chamber. The Old Man was already stripping off his own clothes and washing himself. He gestured to a basin. Gavin staggered over and was messily sick. But apparently it wasn’t an emetic only.
“Can’t take any risks that you swallowed something,” Grinwoody said. “I have somewhere to be. I’ll be back with clothes and real food. Don’t forget: you try anything—and I mean even yell—and that black crystal will go straight through your skull.”
But Gavin was too busy being sick to even think of escape.
Chapter 74
“Your lady awaits in the honeymoon chamber, my lord,” Cruxer said.
They were not, perhaps, words that should have inspired dread.
Kip blew out a breath. He and Cruxer were virtually alone in the Council’s chamber, which they’d converted to a war room. It was late. Big Leo was the only other person in the room, and he was propped against a wall, reading a book.
The first night in Dúnbheo, the Divines had either been in disarray or had intentionally snubbed Kip by not having a room made ready. Kip and Tisis had worked so late they’d simply grabbed the nearest defensible room and slept. He didn’t actually care, but he’d known that other people would—and that they would take his acceptance of an insult as a sign of weakness or barbarity—so he’d made a passing comment about how it was strange a people so famed for their hospitality could make such an oversight.
Tisis had helped, musing that maybe hospitality was more a virtue of the rural areas. The palace staff had been mortified. Outclassed by bumpkins? Unthinkable.
The conveniently dead Lord Comán had been blamed, and the staff had been almost painfully punctilious. Tonight they had prepared a room that was apparently not simply the city’s finest, but a cultural treasure of some sort.
“Breaker?” Cruxer asked.
Kip was staring at the map. “Uh, right. I’m just waiting for one last report.”
“He’s gone, Breaker,” Cruxer said. “It’s not giving up on him to admit it. He just couldn’t take it. Death isn’t the only way we lose people in war.”
Contrary to his promise, Conn Arthur had left immediately, slipping away while the rest of the Nightbringers marched into the city. No one had seen or heard from him since.
“It’s not just him,” Kip said. “Sibéal’s gone, too.”
“Gone? No note?”
“Nothing,” Kip said. “I don’t know if she went after Conn Arthur or if I’m looking at the beginning of a general desertion by the Ghosts.”
“That’s impossible,” Cruxer said. “Why would they?”
“Maybe they think if we save Green Haven they’ll be back under the Chromeria’s thumb and it’ll be the end of them. I don’t know,” Kip said.
“No. Not gonna happen,” Cruxer said with total certainty.
Kip loved him for that.
“And this is not something you need to worry about tonight. Sometimes you move heaven and earth, Breaker, and sometimes you just go to bed and let your wife make you happy. Very happy, if the gleam in her eye tells me anything.”
“You’re a moron to keep her waiting,” Big Leo said from the corner, speaking for the first time in hours.
But Kip didn’t move. That damned map.
“There other problems?” Cruxer asked quietly enough Big Leo wouldn’t overhear. “I mean, between you and her?”
Kip met his eye and was tempted to tell him everything, but how could Cruxer understand? And was it any of his business, anyway? “Nah, it’s, it’s fine. It’s great.”
Cruxer saw straight through the lie. Kip could tell. But he seemed to forgive it immediately. There are things a man just doesn’t want to share about his marriage. “Well, uh, even if there were some, uh, tough things going on, she didn’t seem in a mood to fight tonight.”
“Thanks,” Kip said. “I mean, thanks, really.” For putting up with a lie. That wasn’t worthy of me.
“Nah, I’d say she was in a different mood altogether,” Big Leo said from his corner. Apparently they hadn’t been speaking quietly enough.
But that damned map. Tisis had been working with the refugees from all over the Forest, all day long, to fill in more reports about the White King’s movements. Kip rewound it and watched the light blossom again, everything they had since Ox Ford and even before up to the present.
He was missing something.
“Well, don’t thank me, get a move on,” Cruxer said happily.
But Kip didn’t move. He reached for the bag with the rope spear and tried to think. He bathed himself in yellow light from a special lantern. The problem was, he was almost done. He needed only to make the spear point now, and he wasn’t certain that luxin would make the best material for it. He’d thought about tying a tassel to the spearhead to distract the eye or perhaps filling it with off-spectrum brightwater so it would shimmer and gleam as it moved, but he hadn’t decided yet.
“Two things,” Cruxer said.
Kip looked at up at his friend. Cruxer drew a black spearhead from a bag.
Not just black, hellstone. He handed it to Kip. A setting of blackened steel graced the base of the blighted leaf-blade. Kip examined it and then the mantle of the rope spear. They snapped together perfectly.
“You want to explain this?” Kip asked.
“The hellstone came from the treasury here.”
That wasn’t what Kip was asking, and Cruxer had to know. “Ben-hadad do this?” he asked.
“We sort of all thought it was about time you were done with that damn thing,” Big Leo said, still without looking up from his book.
“What are you talking about?” Kip asked.
“Permission to speak bluntly, my lord?” Cruxer asked.
“Of course.”
“I mean, really bluntly.”
“Come on,” Kip said. As if he’d take offense.
“I figure a good friend gets one free chance to tell you you’re being an asshole in your life. And if he’s right, he gets one more.”
“That is an excellent introduction into whatever you’re about to tell me,” Kip said.
“Are you just tolerating that amazing fucking woman down the hall there, hoping you can trade her for Teia someday? Grow some balls, man. Make a choice. You know we all love Teia. You know we do. But you’re being an asshole to a woman who is better than I think you appreciate.”
“I appreciate her!” Kip protested.
“The question, Breaker,” Big Leo said, looking up from his book, his feet still propped up, “isn’t if you appreciate her. It’s whether you’re an asshole or a moron.”
“What are you talking about?” Kip said. “Wait, is this about the rope spear? Are you joking? You think I’ve been making this for Teia?”
Big Leo closed his book, sighed, and walked toward the door.
“I’m glad you all have been so thoroughly won over by my wife,” Kip said to Cruxer. “But you’re sadly mistaken about the whole rope spear thing.”
Cruxer looked at him flatly. “Yes, my lord.”
Kip looked at him, peeved. Of course, if they’d been mistaken, then mightn’t she…
And then he thought of all the times Tisis had seemed disappointed or hurt when he’d pulled out his little project to work on. Surely she couldn’t have made the same mistake.
Oh hells. She thought he hadn’t really chosen her.
Hadn’t chosen her? Come on! What bullshit… what totally, goddamned… accurate bullshit.
He was making the best of the hand life had given them.
But that was different, wasn’t it? It wasn’t making the choice his. It wasn’t owning it.
Kip looked at the rope spear he’d made. It was a perfect weapon, and completely hypothetical. He couldn’t use it.
He hadn’t chosen Tisis, had he? Despite everything. He’d called what they had ‘fun’ and told her he ‘cared for her,’ and he’d spent his spare time—for a year!—on a gift for another woman.
He stood up and tossed the damn thing to Cruxer.
“What do you want me to do with it?” Cruxer asked.
“I don’t care,” Kip said.
“You spent a year on that thing,” Big Leo said, standing up and closing his book. “It’s brilliant. I mean, the execution, not the idea of you doing it. Or working on it in front of your wife. Or taking time away from—”
“Thanks, Big Leo! Enough!” Kip said.