Chapter 44
“I can’t do this,” Big Leo said. “This Lord Arias is a twig.”
“What’s hard about it?” Daelos asked. “Go out there and lower the boom on him. I’ve seen you do it before.”
“The boom?” Ferkudi asked.
“I didn’t mean I can’t. I meant I can’t,” Big Leo said.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Ferkudi said.
“I meant in good consc—” Big Leo said.
“Nah, I mean the boom. Aren’t booms more dangerous when they’re swinging around than—”
“Maybe that’s the test, Leo,” Ben-hadad said, fiddling with his lenses. “Maybe we’re supposed to refuse an immoral order.”
“Or maybe we’re supposed to follow an order when we can’t see the bigger picture,” Ferkudi said.
The others looked at him. After the three-quarters of the time that Ferkudi was a clown, he’d come back and surprise them with some keen observation.
“What?” he asked. “What?”
Kip’s squad, dressed in street clothes, had scouted the broad corner at Verrosh and Harmonia. There was nothing particularly special about this corner that they could see. No one else was watching it. It wasn’t particularly prosperous. It wasn’t the busiest in the city. Perhaps, for a heretic, that meant fewer merchants’ guards and house guards who might throw an elbow or a stone. Perhaps he was just moon mad and he’d picked this corner randomly.
Daelos and Goss were still out watching approaches to the corner, and Teia was ambling through the intersection itself, seeing what she could see, but the rest of them were huddled in a circle behind a store, trying to figure out what to do. They usually found a rendezvous point farther away, but there hadn’t been any good spots.
“Hey! What are you boys doing? Get out of here, scram!” a hairy-armed store guard barked.
Cruxer gave a mild oath at himself. Kip knew the young man would see it as a personal failure that someone had noticed them clumped up. Cruxer gestured, and they all started walking away from the shop.
“Yeah, that’s right. Scurry away, ya little vermin,” the store guard said.
They gritted their teeth and didn’t reply. Knowing that you could win a fight wasn’t a good enough reason to jeopardize a mission.
Tempting as it was.
The goon sneered. He obviously thought they were up to no good, but as long as they weren’t threatening his employer’s store, what did he care? He didn’t follow.
“Feels like there’s got to be some trick,” Kip said.
“There is,” Teia said, rejoining them silently. “But not on us.”
“What is it?” Cruxer asked quietly.
“There’s a woman watching the preacher from across the street. She’s carrying bandages. And the preacher himself, he’s the real thing. He’s a Blood Robe. He’s got sealed scroll cases that he’s handing off to certain people as they pass. He’s a handler of spies.”
“Oh, I can do this. This Lord Arias is a twig,” Big Leo said. He loosened up a shoulder that would have made a draft horse jealous.
“Hold,” Cruxer said. “We don’t know that he’s alone. But I do feel better knowing there’s some plan, even if I don’t know what it is. Give me a second.”
And the insane thing with Cruxer was that it was only a second. He scowled, looked at his team, and then started giving orders.
In moments, the team scattered, each to his or her appointed task. It left only Kip with nothing to do. “Cruxer,” Kip said. “Captain, I mean.” When they were on assignment, even the inductees were supposed to observe the official order scrupulously. “You’ve done me nothing but good turns. We both know I wouldn’t be in the Blackguard without you, but you can’t keep me out of the action. Doing that will only make those who are already better than me get even farther ahead. I need to be in the thick of things.”
Cruxer’s brown eyes, barely edged with green and yellow around the iris, fell on Kip like a sledge. “I’m captain,” Cruxer said.
That was all there was to it. “Yes, sir,” Kip said.
“There’s a good vantage. But we’re gonna have to climb,” Cruxer said. He took off.
A climb difficult enough that Cruxer found it worth mentioning? “Wonderful,” Kip said. He jogged after the older boy.
They cut wide a few blocks, slowed as they crossed the main streets, and came eventually to a building on the opposite side of the intersection from the spy. They went around the back of the building, which had scaffolding up, as the dingy dome was being worked on. The ladder had been pulled away from the scaffolding—doubtless to keep young scoundrels from climbing it.
Cruxer rested his back against the wall, took a wide stance, and cupped his hands, waiting for Kip to use it to jump.
“I could draft a ladder,” Kip said.
“You’ll jump,” Cruxer said.
“I’ll jump.”
“Hand to shoulder, then pull yourself up.”
Easy for you to say. Kip rolled his shoulders, shook his head, and took a deep breath.
“Not got all day here, Breaker.” Cruxer leaned his one shoulder forward, to give Kip more space to step.
Kip charged with the grace of a drunken turtle-bear, stepped into Cruxer’s cupped hand, onto his shoulder with the other foot even as Cruxer heaved his foot upward, and jumped. His hands slapped easily onto the edge of the wood platform, and he still had upward momentum. He pulled himself up and flopped onto the platform.
He spun around on his stomach and offered a hand down. Cruxer, standing in place, jumped straight up, grabbed Kip’s hand, kicked off the wall, and landed—standing up, stepping carefully over Kip.
And that’s why he’s the captain.
The scaffolding extended around the front of the building, and there were piles of brick stacked on it, waiting to be put in place and whitewashed. Cruxer and Kip moved forward, keeping low. The intersection was forty paces or more wide here, and against the dingy dome and the bricks, the two of them should be virtually invisible. Close enough to watch, far enough away not to be seen, and close enough to help if it all went to hell.
“Breaker,” Cruxer said. “It’s time we acknowledge something.”
That doesn’t sound so good. “Mm?” Kip asked.
“You’re never going to be a Blackguard.” Cruxer didn’t say it as a threat. He said it as simple fact.
Kip’s heart leapt into his throat. “I’m getting better. I’ll catch up, I swear.”
“It’s not that.”
Then Kip understood. “Look, I know the squad has this thing about me being the Lightbringer,” Kip said. “But—”
“Doesn’t matter.” Cruxer poked his head up over the edge. Big Leo was still making his way up Verrosh. Even hunched to seem smaller than he was, the young hulk was hard to miss. “They’ll never let you take final vows.”
“They?”
“Let’s say you make full ’guard. And you get put on rotation to guard the Red, whom everyone knows you’re feuding with. Hard to imagine, isn’t it? Or maybe you’ve patched up your feud with him, and you get put on rotation to cover the White—whom everyone knows he’s feuding with. Hard to imagine, isn’t it? I’m sure your grandfather has plans for you. Becoming a Blackguard would give you all sorts of protections from him. There’s no way he’d let that happen. That’s if the White doesn’t have her own plans for you.”
“Maybe her plans involve me getting those protections by staying in.” But Kip was only denying it because he wanted it to be wrong.
“Blackguards face the truth, Breaker. It’ll be a miracle if she lives long enough for you to make it to final vows.”
Kip’s stomach sank. Everyone knew the White had a year left, two at the most. Cruxer was right. There was no way Kip would be ready to be a full Blackguard in that time. Ironfist had bent the rules to get him this far.
“And if your father comes back in time to work his own particular magic, I’m sure he’s got his own plans for you.”
He thought of his grandfather’s view of oaths. If Andross Guile had meant what he’d told Kip, he definitely wouldn’t want Kip to make an oath that might put Kip against him—which was precisely what taking the Blackguard oath might do. He threw his hands up. “So why even have me in the squad?”
Cruxer body-slammed him with a disappointed look. “Don’t go back to being that whinging fat boy Kip. You’re Breaker now.”
Ouch.
“You’re in the squad because you deserve it,” Cruxer said. “The question for you, knowing that your time with us is limited, is what are you going to accomplish here? Heads up. We’re go.”
Big Leo walked as inconspicuously as possible through the thin crowd until he was about ten paces from the preacher, who was holding forth, though no one seemed to be paying him any attention. From their vantage, Kip couldn’t decipher a word either said, but Leo had planned to allege that the heretics had been responsible for killing his sister.
Leo shouted something, and then jumped on the preacher before the man could flee.
Since his cover was as a simple laborer, Leo was careful not to fight like a trained fighter. He simply grabbed the preacher’s hair in one hand and punched him rapidly in the face. If you’ve never been hit in the face, it’s deeply shocking even if there isn’t much power in it. Kip knew that Leo could have killed the man in a blow. Instead, he was pulling each punch, hitting the man in succession: cheek, eye, nose, mouth, cheek, eye. Blood poured freely, and the man was going to look and feel like he’d been beaten within a thumb of his life—without actually endangering him much. Big Leo hauled the man up, holding his entire weight by his hair as the man collapsed, and slugged him twice in the ribs, hard enough to break them.
Leo dropped the man and turned, and this time spoke loudly enough that Kip could hear him: “Shame on all of you for tolerating this heresy in your midst! These people are monsters! Murderers! You let him walk free and spread his poison here? Shame!” Leo spat on the stones and turned to stomp off.
No one did anything. Not that the squad had expected them to, but it was nice to see something they’d planned work: by identifying the spy as a heretic, they’d hoped Leo could get out clean.
Unseen though, behind Leo, Lord Arias had risen on unsteady feet. He pulled out a knife. Leo’s back was to him. The spy lurched toward him.
It was too far away for a shout to do any good. Worse, a shout might distract Leo from the sound of the spy approaching him.
The spy drew the blade up to bury it in Leo’s back—and his arm dropped, limp. The sound of the blade tinging off the paving stones made Leo spin. He saw the knife and the staggering man at once, and his fist came up in a flash.
“Don’t kill him!” Cruxer whispered, as if he could will Leo to inaction.
Big Leo unclenched his fist and grabbed the spy at the collar and the waistband. He spun in a rapid circle with the man and hurled him out into the street. He stood for a long moment, flexing his fists. Kip could see that the battle juice was on him. Big Leo had gone for a quick fistfight, and had almost ended up dead. It was hard to think rationally. Leo took a step toward the downed spy.
Teia darted out from the crowd. “Brother!” she shouted. “Thank Orholam!” Kip couldn’t hear the rest of what she said, but she took Leo by the arm and pulled him away. He didn’t resist. Her appearance had snapped him out of his rage.
She pulled him down Verrosh Street.
“What the hell was that?” Kip asked.
“Good luck?” Cruxer suggested. But he grinned. Kip could tell he knew exactly what had made that knife drop.
“I’m serious.”
“That was paryl. You’re not the only one changing things around here. Teia’s got a few tricks, too. That one doesn’t usually work for her yet, though. Thus: good luck.”
Together, they watched. Teia was soon indistinguishable, but it took longer for Big Leo to blend with the crowds. Then Ferkudi and Ben-hadad came onto Verrosh, blocks down, almost out of sight, and began separately walking toward the square. They passed Big Leo with neither side acknowledging the other.
“You see anyone follow Leo?” Kip asked. He hadn’t.
“One possible. We’ll see in a moment.”
If the spy had an ally eager to exact a quick vengeance or even just to see where Leo had come from, it was vital that that friend fail.
Ferkudi stumbled into someone and they both went sprawling, Ferkudi taking by far the worse of it. He made a big show of it, crashing into a Parian headscarf seller’s booth and sending scarves flying.
Only Ferkudi could lower the boom on himself.
A slender Parian woman dodged out of the booth instantly, shouting and waving her arms in big gestures.
“They get away?” Kip asked.
“If they didn’t with that? I’ll give them a thrashing myself,” Cruxer said.
Down in the intersection below them, though, another quieter drama was playing out. The woman Teia had seen had come to the downed spy and was tending to his wounds.
“Thoughts?” Cruxer asked.
Kip studied the woman. Teia said she’d already had bandages near to hand before anything had happened. “A spy to spy on the spy,” Kip said. “A better way to insinuate her into their ranks than just showing up and saying, ‘Hello, I hate the Chromeria, too! Can I join you?’”
“Good point. And see that one back there? Beaded beard, gold earrings?”
Kip grunted an assent. He hadn’t seen him before now.
“That’s the spy’s actual handler. He almost came out of hiding when Leo struck, and then he almost ran away. Now he’s just watching. I think we can call this mission a success.”
“As long as no one saw us,” Kip said.
“We’ll wait here for a bit.” Cruxer sat with his back against the bricks. Kip sat beside him.
Minutes passed, and Kip had a thought that he’d had half a hundred times before. Now was as good a time as any. It seemed that he got in trouble for the times he didn’t speak nearly as often as he got in trouble for speaking too fast. But he’d been a coward with inaction too many times.
“Captain…” Kip said. “I just … about Lucia. The assassin—the assassin was aiming at me.” He could still remember Lucia with her back to the assassin, stepping into the line of fire at the last instant. He would never forget the look on Cruxer’s face as the young man had pulled Lucia’s bleeding body from Kip’s stunned arms and into his own.
Cruxer stared into the distance. Then his mouth twitched into a sad smile, remembering Lucia. Then he was back. “I know,” he said.
“You know?”
“I went back to that alley. Recreated the murder. The target could only be you.” He shrugged.
“You’re … you’re not mad?” Kip asked.
“I’m furious. But not at you. Breaker, if Lucia died saving your life, her death may still have been an accident, but it’s no longer meaningless. Death for a purpose? What more could any of us ask? Lucia wasn’t good enough to make it into the Blackguard. She knew it, and she was just beginning to grapple with the death of that dream. She was never going to make it into our ranks, but she still died serving our highest ideals. It’s not for nothing.”
So this is why he wants me to be the Lightbringer so much. If I am, Lucia died for the most important person in history.
“But what if I’m not the Lightbringer?” It just slipped out, quiet and sad.
“Don’t you take it away from her,” Cruxer said. “It has nothing to do with that. All are equal in Orholam’s eyes: she died for a friend, a squad mate. It is our earthly task as Blackguards to die for Colors and Prisms—but in Orholam’s eyes, dying for a pauper means as much as dying for a prince.”
Kip sat there for a few more minutes. He knew Cruxer meant it. But Cruxer saw Orholam’s hand everywhere. He believed that Orholam intervened in the world constantly. Commander Ironfist saw Orholam as a distant king who could intervene when he chose, but rarely chose to do so. Andross thought Orholam had set the world in order, but hadn’t touched it since, allowing the whole system of the Chromeria and the Magisterium to become a swindle that the nobles and Chromeria had pulled over on the Seven Satrapies.
Oddly enough, the latter part seemed to be the Color Prince’s view, too.
What Gavin’s view was, Kip didn’t know. Nor did he know what the truth was.
“Captain. I don’t know if this is the time, but what do people really know about the Lightbringer? At worship that one time, Klytos Blue said we’re all Lightbringers, and I’ve spent a few hours looking up prophecy interpretations in the libraries, but they all seem to contradict each other, so I gave it up. All I got is that he’s going to restore true worship—whatever that is. He’s going to comfort the afflicted, open the eyes of the blind, throw down the altars and high places, raise up the oppressed, and cast down the wicked.”
“And kill gods and kings,” Cruxer said. He smirked.
“Gods and kings, plural?” Kip asked uncomfortably.
“I can’t remember. Of course, it depends which Seers you accept as canon. Those things are accepted by pretty much everyone. Some of the weirder Seers said, uh, can’t remember the exact phrasing, something about killing his brother—”
“Well that’s promising.” Zymun could use a good killing.
“—and dying twice.”
“I take that back,” Kip said.
“You did go overboard, and we thought you were dead, so that might count as one,” Cruxer said. “And everyone dies at the end of their life, so that could be it.”
“Or … the pirates who rescued me threw me back overboard, so maybe that’s twice,” Kip said. He didn’t buy it, though. “Great! Really helpful. Now I know I only need to die one, two, or zero more times. I may have to kill at least one more god and one more king. I do have to figure out how to heal blind people, and maybe pick up a bit about true worship.”
“Breaker, if it was easy, everyone would agree about it. A Seer sees a true vision, but they have to translate that into words, and that means into their own language, and into their own metaphors. And that’s if she’s a true Seer—there have been false ones. There are luxiats who make their life’s work of this sort of thing. Luxiats who are much better scholars than Klytos Blue, I might mention.”
“But if it’s all theological complexity and uncertainty, it’s useless! I mean, if I can’t figure out what it means, what’s the point?”
“Maybe it’s not for you.”
“I accept that, but if I were the Lightbringer wouldn’t I need…”
“No, even then.”
Kip looked at him, puzzled. “I’m … uh, not following.”
“The Lightbringer Prophecies may well not be for the Lightbringer’s benefit. They’re for everyone else. For the soldier who understands only a snippet, but it helps him hold the line. For the bereaved widow. For the young scholar, searching for meaning. What’s it matter, anyway? You’ve done pretty well so far not knowing the prophecies,” Cruxer said.
“Deliberate ignorance. I like this idea,” Kip said. He thought for a moment. “Everything we’ve said could be talking about my father. People thought he was dead when he fell into the water—” And somehow survived being stabbed with a knife that had morphed into a sword while it impaled him. Kip hadn’t told that part to anyone. They had already disbelieved him when he’d simply said his father wasn’t drowned. Who would believe the rest? Kip didn’t believe it; half the time he was convinced his eyes must have been playing tricks on him. “—and we’ve already talked about how a god being killed on Gavin’s command could well count even if he didn’t land the final blow.”
“His childhood doesn’t fit. Prophecy says the Lightbringer will come from the outside, outside the accepted or something. It fits a bas—a person initially thought to be a bastard coming from Tyrea. Doesn’t get much more outside the accepted than that. Gavin Guile is the son of Andross. He grew up here. He was groomed to take power. It doesn’t get much more inside than that.”
“Well, you didn’t tell me about that part!” Kip complained.
“I’m a Blackguard, not a luxiat. If you want to talk about prophecies, the people you should see are … well, actually they’re the last people you should see. In fact, I’m not so sure we should be including Quentin in any of this.”
“Quentin? Why not?”
“Somehow I thought it would be obvious to you. I forget you grew up in Tyrea.”
“Why wouldn’t I go to the luxiats?”
“Because if now is the time true worship needs to be restored, it means the luxiats are doing things so wrongly that Orholam himself is putting his hand in to make it right.”
“Well, shouldn’t they welcome Orholam moving? I mean, they’re luxiats.”
“Breaker … are you really that na?ve?”
“They serve Orholam! That’s their job!” Kip said.
“Voice down.”
“Sorry, Captain.”
“We Blackguards exist to stop assassinations. It doesn’t mean we look forward to them.”
“Totally different,” Kip said.
“The more power you have, the more skeptical you’re going to be about someone coming along who wants to take all of it away. There have been false Lightbringers before. If you show up out of nowhere without undeniable proof that you are who we suspect, you might find yourself standing right at the fissure line of a schism. There have already been attempts to kill you, Breaker. Where do you think those have come from?”
One came from my grandfather, but he denied the others.
“Who else would even know you were alive?” Cruxer asked. “I don’t think the Color Prince would think you were worth killing when you first came here. If anything, you did him a favor by killing King Garadul and putting him in power.”
“Thanks for reminding me.”
“So if not him, Breaker, who?”
The Order of the Broken Eye? But they were just assassins for hire, right?
So unless there were yet more unknown enemies out there, it had probably been luxiats who’d tried to kill Kip. But luxiats? Really?
“Hells,” Kip said. More enemies.
Then he was struck by the fact that of anyone, it should be Cruxer who had such a cynical view of the Magisterium. “Captain? Doesn’t it shake your faith, I mean, if it really was the luxiats who killed Lucia?”
Cruxer looked away. “My faith isn’t in men.”
Which didn’t leave Kip with anything to say.
But that had never stopped him before. “So,” Kip said. “If I’m never going to be a Blackguard, what do you think I should be using this time for?”
“Learn to kill. Learn to lead. Learn who your friends are, and then draw them so close to you that every time someone shoots a musket ball at you, it hits one of your friends and not you.”
“That’s … that’s a horrible way to think about friends.”
“Breaker, if you become a Color or a Prism, and a thousand times more if you become the Lightbringer, you’ll no longer be merely our friend. You’ll be our lord first. It is right and proper that we should die for you. It is our purpose.”
Suddenly, Kip felt like he was locked in that closet again, covered by rats gnawing, gnawing, gnawing at him. But now the rats were cares, worries, burdens, people he could let down, people who would die if he failed, people who would die even if he succeeded. He felt sick and claustrophobic, hot and cold.
“Knowing I would die for you, how would you live if you were worthy of that sacrifice? Live that way,” Cruxer said.
“Simple, huh?” Kip asked sardonically.
“Simple. Not easy.”
They sat in silence for a few more minutes. Kip pretended to be thoughtful, but the idea was so big it couldn’t bear the weight of someone looking at you and wondering how much of it you’d processed. So mostly, he sat there and pretended to think, and felt wretched and dumb.
When they got up to go, he said, “Should we follow their route to the safe house and check up on them, or should we go direct?”
“Let’s go direct. They got away clean.”