Chapter 76
Kip was dead.
Teia staggered to her feet in disbelief. She felt like she’d been bludgeoned between the eyes with a brick. She felt like she was standing knee deep in the shallows of a mighty river, waters roaring through and past her. Kip lay like he’d been cast out of the current, his body sprawled, mind broken, spark extinguished.
Kip is dead.
It didn’t look right. Kip, as meat. Without his animating spirit, Kip was a brow hewn from granite, shoulders to shame draft horses, and staring eyes of many colors. This was a body; this wasn’t Kip.
Teia could hear nothing but the cataclysmic wind gusts of her own heart, pumping, pumping, as if blowing on a forest fire. Kip dead? It was impossible. And it was.
I didn’t hug him. Why didn’t I hug him? He staggered back from death’s door, and held me, and I didn’t hold him. I let him down. Why?
I’m not a slave. I’m not a slave. I tell myself that every day. Why?
Because I don’t believe it. And despite all I feel for Kip—for all the Kips I know him as—I can’t love him if I’m still a slave. He was my master. If only for a time. If only in word. Kip could think of me any way he wanted to, but it didn’t matter, doesn’t matter, as long as I’m a slave in my own eyes.
My lenses are bad. My eyes, broken.
I hate being a slave, because I hate what it has made me, because it has changed me, and I can’t change back in a day. I can’t say yes to Kip, though all my soul longs for it, because I haven’t taken my freedom. Not yet.
Why do I want so much to be a Blackguard? Because they are the best slaves in the world, with the best masters, with rules that make sense, well rewarded, and well directed. But directed. Ordered. Always, always subordinate. And a part of me craves that.
Orholam, what would it be like, to be whole?
Teia blinked, hating and overcome with disappointment at who she’d become—and then she felt as if she were standing outside herself. For one heartbeat, she saw a vision of herself standing before her, as an adult. Only a couple years older, maybe, but she looked totally other. She stood tall—well, as tall as her slight frame could manage—but she stood free, there was joy in her eyes, pride in her stance, and mischief on her lips. And she was beautiful. Not the beauty of curves and men’s desire, a brighter beauty than that. She was a woman fully herself, a woman who had life, and had it in full.
And then the vision was gone. But Teia knew it was herself as she could be.
A tear tracked down her cheek.
I realize this now? Now?!
Kip shall not be dead.
Again, Teia seemed to be standing in that great river, nearly sweeping her off her feet. She had such a strong, sudden conviction that it was some titanic, immeasurable magic that she widened her eyes to paryl—and saw nothing, but she lost not her conviction that it was here, it was true. There was a magic she knew not.
Not yet.
Kip was dead, his eyes staring blankly into nothing.
Kip is dead; he’s left us all behind. I’ve learned from him, but too late.
Kip shall not be dead.
His hand was wet with blood from his torn knuckles.
Life is in the blood.
Paryl is the master color. Paryl makes us feel all. Barely knowing what she was doing, Teia drafted paryl from her hand to Kip’s blood. She could feel it, and then she plunged the magic into his blood, going after the receding luxin, the receding light, the receding life, like it was a rope trailing out of her reach.
As soon as her luxin passed the barrier of Kip’s skin, she gasped. The Chromeria didn’t even begin to teach Will magics until late in a discipula’s tenure because it was so dangerous, so prone to abuse. Kip had willjacked an opponent once, though, and it had been described to the Blackguard scrubs then. Luxin had no memory, and Will was where the technology of chromaturgy met the magic of the thing. Teia couldn’t draft any of the colors Kip had inside him, but with paryl using Will to interact with one color was the same as using will to interact with any color—so long as the luxin was open.
Kip’s entire body was awash in every color of luxin. From her training, Teia knew you wanted to stop the heart to kill a man. She didn’t know much more than that, though. Certainly, she was no healer.
She found Kip’s heart through his blood, and it was still. She grabbed all the luxin in and around his heart that she could feel. Without any control of each of those colors, it was like grabbing a handful of knots rather than plucking the appropriate threads.
She simply squeezed, hard.
Kip’s entire body jumped in her lap, and she almost lost hold of the magic.
Kip was dead.
What the hell am I doing? Orholam—
Again.
She did it, tears streaming down her face. His body leapt. It seemed a desecration.
Kip is dead. Dammit, leave him alone. Stop this, stop this!
Again.
She jerked so hard, she thought she tore something inside herself. This time, after his body leapt, he seemed to melt into her lap. He was dead. He was really dead.
Teia’s will drained away. All she’d done. It was for nothing. It was just desecrating his corpse. She should be ashamed.
“Orholam’s balls,” Kip said, pained. He moaned. His eyes flickered open, and focused on Teia after a moment. “Teia!” he said, surprised. “I’m here, right? I mean, I’m now? I mean…” His eyes lost focus for a moment, and he blinked, on the brink of passing out.
“Kip?” she asked. She brushed back his wiry hair. Her whole body felt full of light. Her eyes were full of tears, and the tears made the light streak and dance and glow and sing. Kip shall not be dead indeed.
She couldn’t stop grinning.
“Teia, Teia, I have something to say.”
She leaned over him. “Yes?” Maybe it was all drafting, the nearly falling to her death, the escape from Murder Sharp, the fight with Kip, the saving his life; maybe it was touching all the other luxin, maybe it had worked on her even as she’d worked with it, but she felt all warm and soft inside. He was right here. She remembered kissing him, that night after they’d all been out drinking. It had been nice.
“Teia, I have to tell you,” Kip said again.
“Yes?” She should kiss him now. What was the harm?
“You’ve got a booger.”
“Uh-huh, I—what?! What?!”
Kip pulled away and sat up. “Sorry, you were all looming over me, I got claustrophobic.”
“Looming?” She punched his shoulder, while she fished in a pocket for a handkerchief. “I don’t loom.” She started laughing. She couldn’t help it. She deserved it, didn’t she? After leaving him standing there, hugless. It wasn’t like he was retaliating, it was like the universe was. A firm elbow from Orholam himself. She laughed, hard, maybe a little bit out of her mind.
He seemed puzzled by her laughing, but then he joined her in it. “What are we laughing a—”
His smile froze on his face and he stopped laughing. He jumped to his feet, staggering, awkward, but never taking his eyes off her face. An odd black-and-white cloak unfurled from his hand, ignored. He tilted his head, studying her. He blinked, like something else was standing in her shoes.
“Kip?” she said.
“T?” he asked.
No one called her T. She only called herself that.
“Kip, are you … are you well?”
“You’re sheering off in different colors, disappearing. You’re—no, it’s going. It’s—” He shut his eyes tight as if groping for a memory. “Mist Walker.”
Her throat tightened.
He blinked. “It’s gone.” He shook his head then put a hand to his temple as if he had a ferocious headache. “Huh, Mist Walker. You ever heard of that?”
He’d never heard that term. Not from her. Not from anyone. That was an obscure tale.
She opened her mouth to lie to him. She heard Karris’s arguments in her mind that anyone who knew this secret only put them all in more danger. And she saw how right Karris had been. Teia hadn’t needed to know Karris’s identity. It had been helpful only emotionally—and hurtful in every other way possible. And yet still the lie wouldn’t come.
“It’s what I hope to be,” Teia said. And she realized only as the words passed her lips that they were true.
“Huh?” He was obviously still recovering from the pain in his head.
“It’s what I’m doing for the White. I’m infiltrating the Order of the Broken Eye, Kip. I’ve already stolen a shimmercloak for them. My master was in the room with us, upstairs, when you said … It’s why I was … playing dumb? I didn’t want him to have anything over me.”
He didn’t react. She wasn’t sure he heard her. “Mist Walker,” he repeated. He squinted at her. Then he seemed aware of the cloak in his hand again. She’d never seen it before. To himself, Kip said, “He broke the rules, so that meant I could, too. Doesn’t look like leather here, though.”
“He?”
“Mist Walker. Fuck.” Kip stared down at his left wrist, where there was a smudge of color like a tattoo, but fading into his skin. “What the—”
“Kip, Breaker, what are you—”
He winced, his mouth open in a silent cry as if she’d just kicked him in the stones. “Oh, oh, don’t! Don’t call me that. No names. Please. You have no idea. Right now…” He blinked.
“What’s—”
He slung the cloak out and around her shoulders. It billowed strangely, as if it weighed nothing, but settled on her shoulders firmly. It was the strangest material she’d ever felt. Shimmery like satin, cool to the touch like brass, light as air and as heavy as responsibility. It had a hood that looked familiar.
He stepped back and squinted again. “Damn,” he said. “It’s perfect.” He looked back down at his wrist, and rubbed it, but there was nothing there now.
“Kip, what is this?” Teia was suddenly afraid.
“It’s a gift of light. It’s the Night’s Embrace. The Shadow’s Wing. Portable Darkness. A crutch until you learn to walk. To mist walk? I don’t … it’s all scrambling together. It was all so clear.” He squeezed his eyes tightly shut. “And it’s not for me. Mist Walker. Damn. I should have gone for the gun.”
“Kip, I can’t take this. Why would you give me such a thing? This is—” She stopped.
They both looked at the cloak.
“Am I hallucinating again?” Kip asked.
The cloak had gone red. Red like passion, or a blush. And Teia knew it was red, too. That was no green. It didn’t feel green. Not in the least.
And now it shot through with blue, chased by orange, by pink, by a violet tinge. Each wave started at the neckline and coursed down to the hem. Now yellow. Curiosity?
“Oh,” Kip said.
“Oh?”
“It’s the cloak all the shimmercloaks were based on. Of course it’s the best.” He rubbed his eyes. “You can probably make it turn any color you— Oh no.”
He was staring at the cards scattered on the ground around them. He saw that he was standing on one of the cards and he moved carefully, lifting his foot as if the card might bite him. He bent down and grabbed the card as if it were made of rubies and gold, touching only the very edges. “Oh, Orholam, please. Please tell me I didn’t break any of … What the hell?”
He stared at the card as if it was offending him.
He grabbed another card.
“No!” he breathed. His eyes widened.
He grabbed more and more. Stared at each. What was he doing?
“No, no, no,” he said as he turned each over. “Teia, was this like this when you found me?”
“Was what like what?”
“Were the cards like this? No one came in and stole the real ones before you found me?”
“Kip, what are you talking about? They were all stuck to your skin. It was like they were poisoning you.”
“Oh, no no no no. I must have triggered one of her traps. No wonder it almost killed me. Out of all the times I’ve loused everything up…” He cupped his forehead with a hand, aghast.
“Kip! What are you talking about?”
He turned and held up a card in front of her. The back was illustrated painstakingly with geometric designs, lacquered with luxin. He turned the card. The face of it was blank. He showed her another card: blank. Another: blank.
“I’ve destroyed her life’s work! Janus Borig lived to make these cards, and she died protecting them, and now I’ve—” He took a few hurried steps away and retched noisily.
She came over and put a hand on his back. He was hunched over, hands on his thighs. She’d just saved his life, and this was not exactly how she’d expected him to react. Or at all how she’d expected him to react. Orholam, had she been thinking of kissing him?
“Is it really that bad?” she asked. No, T, he’s probably puking for fun.
“It may be worse,” he said, wiping his mouth. “My grandfather believed I knew where the cards were all along, and he’s threatened to kill me if I don’t turn them over. This? There’s no way he’ll believe this.”
“What, uh, what’s this other box?”
Kip sighed. “That’s my grandfather’s favorite deck. My father must have stolen them to spite him. They’re worth a fortune, of course. But one-of-a-kind, of course, so I can’t sell them, can’t hide them, can’t give them back without him knowing that I must have found these others.”
“Maybe this would make a good peace offering?”
Kip considered it, but then shook his head. “I don’t know why my father stole the cards. Maybe he has some purpose for them. When he comes back, I don’t want to have failed him doubly.”
“Kip,” Teia said gently, “you really think he’s coming back?”
“Yes!” he barked. “Yes,” he said more quietly. He winced and squinted. He seemed woozy, nauseated.
Teia went over and turned off all the lights except for the soothing blue.
“Thanks.”
“You’re still my partner, Kip. They haven’t taken that away. Not yet. Now, let’s clean this up.”
They began picking up the cards, and it was good.
Moments of companionable silence passed as they simply worked together. With the cards and the cloak and everything she didn’t understand of what was happening, Teia found herself saying, “I, I thought you were dead.”
Kip looked very tired. “I think … I think I was.”
“That would have been the worst thing that ever happened to me.” She’d wanted to say losing you would have been the worst thing that ever happened, but it was too much. Kip could say whatever popped into his head and get away with it, somehow. She couldn’t.
“I promise to die in some way that’s convenient and non-messy,” Kip said.
“That’s not what I’m—”
“I’m joking.”
“Oh.”
He took a deep breath. “Thank you, Teia. I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to find me destroying priceless artifacts.”
She laughed. Ripples of color went scintillating down her cloak. Whoa, what the hell?
“You know, I think I like that cloak on you,” Kip said. “Makes you a lot easier to read.”
She scowled, but the scowl wasn’t reflected in the cloak, so he could see she was faking, dammit. She shut her eyes and concentrated.
“Ooh, nice,” Kip said. “But I don’t think I can look at that cloak for long right now.” He was wincing and rubbing his temples.
She looked. The cloak was a drab, boring gray. It looked exactly like a normal Blackguard inductee’s cloak. “Kip, this is amazing!” It reacted directly to her will. She didn’t think the shimmercloaks changed their mundane form. Those only did one thing. This, this was something far more.
He grumbled something, but before she could ask him to repeat himself, Karris White Oak opened the door.
She didn’t look particularly pleased to see either of them. Nor was she pleased to see the mess of the punching bag down and sawdust spilled everywhere. She strode in purposefully, glanced at Teia, dismissed her.
“You did this, Kip?” she asked, meaning knocking the bag down.
He nodded, hands in his pockets. He also had a card box in each pocket.
“Show me your hands,” Karris demanded.
Kip pulled his hands out, carefully palm down, and Karris examined—his hands. Teia blew out a relieved breath. She glanced at her cloak. It was staying gray, like she wanted it to. Thank Orholam for that.
“Beat your own knuckles bloody, while training. Now your hands will be no good for days as you heal, and you’ll miss training. Does that strike you as particularly productive?” Karris asked.
“Learning to fight through pain is good training, yes,” Kip said. “And I won’t miss anything.”
Teia almost gasped at his tone, and Karris’s lips thinned. She was still holding Kip’s fist in her hand, and Teia wondered if she was thinking how fast she could turn her hold into an arm bar or a wrist lock and kick Kip’s defiant ass. Instead she turned his right arm over and looked at his elbow. Then she pushed up his sleeve and looked at his shoulder. She found the wound there.
“So you’ve discovered venting,” she said.
“Venting?” Kip asked.
“Shooting luxin is one way to make your punches or kicks faster.”
“Streaming? You already knew about that?” Kip asked.
“Why are you blinking? Do you have a hangover, Kip? Are you lightsick?”
“I’m fine,” he said.
She sighed. “We wait until after final vows to teach it. Your whole squad’s using this?”
Neither Teia nor Kip answered.
“Figures,” Karris said. “It’s a good way for people to burn through their halo in a couple years. And so difficult to use well that most Blackguards use it less than once a year.”
“A mistake,” Kip said. “Would you have us only shoot muskets once a year, because we use them so rarely in actual combat? The lack of practice reinforces—”
He saw the look on Karris’s face and finally shut up.
“So the bag tore off its hanger,” Karris said. “And it split open?”
Teia saw the problem. If the bag had torn off its leather hanger, that would have taken care of the force of a mighty punch. Or if it had ripped open at its loose thread, how would it then have torn off its hanger?
“I’m Guile,” Kip said, still hostile. It was, despite the incredible rudeness, kind of a brilliant response. ‘I’m Guile’ meaning that he was so far outside the norm that you could expect things far outside the norm to happen regularly around him, or ‘I’m Guile’ meaning I’m a cheater, and go to hell if you don’t like it?
Surprisingly enough, Karris didn’t slap Kip’s silly head off. And this was a woman who’d been famous for her temper. It seemed she was changing, mellowing with age. Of course, the open secret that the White had forbidden her to draft might have had a little to do with it, too. As a red/green, it might have been the best thing anyone could have done to her.
Karris’s face went still, her eyes hooded. “Don’t forget, Kip, I’m Guile now, too.”
Oh. So maybe not mellowing with age.
The chagrin on Kip’s face was priceless. Orholam’s bony knuckles, but Teia kind of wanted to give a cheer for her handler.
“Yes, ma’am,” Kip said.
Before Karris could say any more, though, the door creaked open once more. They all turned, but Teia was watching Karris, and she saw the woman’s face drain of color.
“Samite!” she said. “What are you doing down here?”
“The White said you might be here.”
“Sami, what happened to you?”
Teia saw the squat Blackguard give an apologetic grin. Her left hand was wrapped in a thick bandage that despite its thickness couldn’t hide that what was bandaged was smaller than a full hand.
“Retirement,” Samite said with forced cheeriness. “Or a post training the scrubs and the nunks here.” She lifted her chin at Kip and Teia.
Karris had already covered the distance to her friend. She lifted her friend’s arm carefully. Samite winced. “Samite. What happened?”
Samite shrugged. “The promachos has been sending out squads to search for all the bane.”
“Sure, sure,” Karris said.
“Mine went after the yellow. Found it and destroyed it. Not many wights there, but when yellows go wight, they figure out how to draft a solid yellow. All of them figure it out, it seems. Hell of a fight. Half the squad was new kids, and I was the only casualty. Embarrassing, frankly.”
Karris embraced her friend. Samite stood stoic for a moment, but then hugged Karris back.
“Guess this is what I get for that other thing. With Lady Guile. The last Lady Guile, I mean. Felia.”
“No, no, no, don’t talk like that.”
Teia was suddenly embarrassed at seeing this intimate expression between friends—and also intensely curious, though she could tell that this was a secret she wasn’t going to be learning.
Samite pushed back from Karris and looked at the heavy bag. “Kip, you do this?”
He nodded.
Samite continued, “Your father would be proud. He told me once to give you a hard time if you hadn’t knocked the bag open by Sun Day.”
Which did two things to Teia. First, she was deeply ashamed that she’d been part of the prank to keep that stitch reinforced and the thread loose. Second, it made her realize that Gavin had meant Kip to get those cards if he didn’t come back.
“But, I, uh, I’m not here about that, and I’m sorry to interrupt your training of these two, Lady Guile.” Samite took a deep breath. She glanced at Kip and Teia and shrugged. “It’s for your ears, but I guess they’ll know soon enough. Lady Guile, I wouldn’t have come to interrupt you for just … my … news. I came here to give you warning.”
“Warning?” Karris asked.
Teia was looking at Kip. He blanched. Teia had no idea what it was, but Kip obviously already knew what Samite was going to say.
“When we Blackguards landed on Big Jasper, there was another ship at the docks. A young lord was debarking. He was quite … willful, trying to make his way through the pilgrimage crowds. He said his name was Zymun.”
Kip looked ill again, but in a very different way.
Karris looked at her blankly. “And…?”
“Karris,” Samite said, “Zymun says he’s your son. The White wishes you to report to her, immediately.”