Chapter 64
Kip was sitting at his desk with mounds of books threatening to bury him when someone knocked on his door. It could only be Tisis Malargos. Kip had been preparing for this since he’d left the old man’s room. He still wasn’t ready.
The truth was, Kip didn’t really know Tisis. Sure, she’d pretended that she was going to kill him during his Threshing. Sure, she’d single-handedly made him fail by giving him back the bell rope after he’d thrown it away, but perhaps Kip shouldn’t take it personally. He was starting to understand what it was to inherit the enmities of your people. How could it have been personal? She’d never even met him before that day.
And of course, Kip had later killed her uncle. That kind of made them even, didn’t it?
He got up, braced himself, and opened the door.
It wasn’t Tisis. It was two Blackguards, Buskin and Lytos, looking almost like a comedy, Buskin was so short and Lytos was so tall. But they weren’t smiling.
“Know how we been searching the seas?” Buskin asked.
“For my father?” Kip asked eagerly.
“No,” Lytos said at the same time Buskin said, “Yes.”
They shot a look at each other.
“No need to keep it from him if he knows,” Buskin said. “Some of us go looking for the bane, and some of us go looking for the Prism. It’s supposed to be secret.”
“My grand—the promachos told me about it,” Kip said. “And he said I’d get a chance to go.”
“This ain’t that. With so many of us full Blackguards training everyone, Watch Captain Fisk has got us dipping into the nunks to help look for bane. Your number came up.”
“Watch Captain Fisk?” Kip said. “You mean Trainer Fisk?”
“You’d know about his promotion and the schedule if you bothered coming to practice more often,” Lytos said in his odd eunuch’s tenor.
Fisk had been promoted to Karris’s old position as watch captain? That was a small disaster. Fisk had worked with Andross to try to keep Kip out of the Blackguard. For all the times he’d seemed friendly, he was a traitor at the core.
“How long we going to be gone?” Kip asked.
Lytos said, “Back before dark. They don’t want the nunks missing any training—any more training, maybe I should say—so you all don’t do overnights.” He looked around Kip’s room. “Nice quarters. You sure you want to give this up for a barracks?”
Right. Because my life is so wonderful and easy. Kip let retorts dance behind his teeth, as if taking the jibe with good humor. “Enough of the easy life for me. I’m ready to buckle down and really start to work.”
“Good. Well, let’s get to it, then,” Buskin said. He really was incredibly short. Even with his silly high shoes.
Suddenly though, Kip really didn’t want to go with these two. There was something off. They hadn’t ever before been hostile to him. It was like something had worked them up. Had he done something to insult them? Maybe it was like his father had warned him: they disliked how easy it seemed he was getting a good life handed to him.
Whatever it’s costing me, at least I’m coming out ahead of Lytos, whose parents made him a eunuch in hopes it would help him get into the Blackguard.
And it was Kip’s first chance to get to take part in the search for his father himself, even if only tangentially.
He grabbed his stuff. “Ready.”