It seemed to be the right thing to say, though. The Blackguards nodded and grumbled, and Gavin Greyling smiled weakly at her.
“Broken, huh?” he said. “They didn’t want to tell me. I could feel it, though. Something wrong, something let loose in me. Shit.”
“Shit,” Karris agreed. The cat was out of the bag now. What did it matter? These were her people: they would forgive her for remembering she’d been a Blackguard first.
“Ambushed us,” Gavin Greyling said. “We were looking for Promachos.”
“Of course you were,” Karris said. Orholam have mercy. They’d been looking for her husband. Quietly.
Officially, Andross Guile had stopped sending out Blackguards to look for Gavin. They were overworked already, and didn’t need their deaths hastened by drafting more. Other eyes and ears had taken on those duties, searching foreign capitals and rival houses for any whisper of him.
The Blackguards were professionals. They weren’t supposed to have favorites.
But they’d loved Gavin Guile. Quietly. They’d loved him. They would never give up on him.
She had to hold back sudden tears. Gavin Greyling was only eighteen years old. He’d been named after her husband. He’d lived to protect him. Now he was dying for him.
She didn’t ask if they’d found anything. Of course they hadn’t. Asking would only drive home the waste of it. This young man was dying for nothing. But his intentions had been good. Heroic, even. War cared nothing.
“You’re entitled to have the Prism-elect perform your Freeing,” Karris said.
“Fuck him,” Gavin said. “Damn. It feels kind of good to be able to say it free and clear. Sorry, Gill. Sorry, brothers, sisters. But fuck him. I know he’s your son, High Mistress. But you got a blind spot where he’s standing. He’s not a good man, High Lady. No one wants to say it to you. No one can tell you the truth. I can now. Because you have to listen to a dying man, don’t you? He did the Freeing last year, and we were there. We’ve been at Freeings—not me, but this brotherhood—we’ve been there with Gavin Guile every time he had to do the Freeing. We saw how a good man approached that day. We saw him steeling his nerves. We saw his vomit in the chamber pot the morning of. We saw his steel spine all day. We saw his drunkenness the night after and the endless baths and the hands bloodied from him scrubbing them over and over. That’s how a real man takes having to kill seventy or a hundred or two hundred friends. Your son did none of that.”
Her heart caught in her throat. This was the blathering of a madman, the raving of the dying. But to cut him off would be a cruelty the Blackguards would never forgive. She had to listen to his words, no matter how vile.
“Your son enjoyed killing seventy men and women. Enjoyed it. And don’t you dare excuse him as a true believer who thought he was sending souls to a better place, to their just reward. He barely prayed the prayers his position demands. He giggled. He killed women before they’d finished their confessions. He stabbed them through the stomach first. Or the loins. He did it for fun.”
And her heart sank. And her heart died. Her son. Her son was inhuman—and she’d known it for long and long.
“Perhaps you can’t hear this. Perhaps telling you the truth will only gain your condemnation and his. But I live to serve you, Karris White Oak, Karris Guile, Karris White, my Iron White.” And now tears spilled from those broken eyes. “I have adored you, always been in awe of you, and I’ve never known how to tell you that this shadow grows in your very house. I have nothing to gain from this, but Karris… he is poison. He may be the flesh of your flesh, but he is not the flesh of your spirit. He is nothing like you. You are so good, and so worthy. Please. Cut him off. Cut him out. And don’t let him near me. High Lady—”
“Enough, brother,” Gill Greyling said, putting a hand on Gav’s shoulder. “We will tell her the truth of it all. I promise. But for now, enough.”
It was as if the jaws of her mind were being pulled open until the corners of her mouth tore open, and her throat were being stuffed with putrid meat faster than she could swallow. Make it stop. Just make it stop. “Are you ready?” Karris asked, cold as iron is cold.
“I am,” he said.
They helped him sit, and then stand. He looked at his compatriots, this boy of eighteen summers. He whispered words in the ears of some, nodded to others. He acted with a gravitas far beyond his years. A few of the Blackguards rushed from the room, unable to contain their weeping though they were supposed to stand strong.
Their weakness was forgiven.
Moving slowly—a wight must move slowly amid the Blackguard—Gavin Greyling approached Karris last.
He knelt. First he looked to his brother Gill. “I’m sorry, brother. You told me to take more care a hundred times. I never listened.”
“I should—”
“It’s not on you,” Gav said. He squeezed his brother’s hand. “Brothers, sisters, I’m sorry to leave you before the final lap of the race.”
Commander Fisk was weeping. He said, “One cannot give more than all. You have finished your race, Blackguard. You may put your burden down.”
“Permission for an extended absence, sir,” Gavin said.
Commander Fisk cleared his throat twice trying to find his words. “Permission granted, soldier.” He snapped to attention, and all the Blackguards followed. The commander drew an ancient dagger from his belt, said to have been passed down from Karris Atiriel herself and the first Blackguard. He spun it in his hand and presented it to Karris.
Then he snapped back to attention with his Blackguards. Some met Gav’s eyes as he looked from face to face. Others couldn’t bear it. Gill was shaking like a leaf trying to keep his composure.
The ward fell silent, even other patients hearing the hushed flap of immortals’ wings.
“I shall miss your jokes,” Karris said. “I shall miss your light and easy spirit.” Her own was as heavy as a millstone.
“Let’s not stretch this out longer than I can take,” Gavin said. He pulled the skin of his chest tight against his ribs to show the chinks between the bones. He stared at his brother’s face and squeezed his hand hard.
“Well done, good and faithful servant. Orholam take you to your rest,” Karris said.
Then she stabbed him in the heart, sliding the dagger home hard, and then pulled it out quickly.
Gill held Gav’s hand until the light went out of his eyes, and then lowered his brother’s body onto the table and fell across him, weeping.
Karris fled, all her ideas of dignity and position forgotten, until she found herself on a rear balcony, in the shadow of the Chromeria, looking over the back bay, where a bone-white ship was loading. She gripped the rail unseeing.
She had always thought that heartbreak would arrive with tears and wailing, disconsolate flopping about and shutting oneself in one’s bed chamber. Not eating. Not sleeping. Looking gaunt and pale, like in the stories.
For her, the sound of her heart cracking was simple and sharp and accompanied by nothing other than silence. It came in one sentence, pitiless and plain, stilling all argument and complaint:
So this is what my life is now.
Gavin, are you out there somewhere? She would know if he were dead, wouldn’t she? She would have a feeling, right? Why did he feel so close, after all this time?
But that was only a stubborn, stupid denial.
She couldn’t afford to lie to herself anymore. She couldn’t let any more good kids die for her willful blindness.
The Third Eye had told her, Orholam will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten.
But God either didn’t see, or didn’t care, or didn’t save. The husband she’d longed for was gone; the son she’d longed for was rotten; the stepson she should have kept she’d driven away. God was a liar.
Her fields were barren and sere, picked clean. Her story was over. Now she would merely survive. She would do her duty. That was all there was.
This is my life now.
“Commander,” she said, not turning.