“Are you going to bed her?” Karris asked.
Gavin coughed. “What?”
“Is that a ‘yes,’ or a ‘yes if the opportunity presents itself’?”
Gavin flushed, but had no words.
Karris turned away first, though. The muscles in her jaw jumped, relaxed. “I’m sorry, Lord Prism. Inappropriate question. I apologize.”
Well, that takes that off the table.
I can’t bed you, but I sure as hell better not bed anyone else, huh? Perfect.
The Third Eye greeted him at the beach, her walk an
aristeia
of corporeal grace, sensuous, sinuous, suggestive without seeming practiced. Standing, she was striking. In motion, she was a woman for whom the world reveled that Orholam had given bodies to his creation, that he had given light that man might see beauty. She was smiling, lips full and red and inviting, eyes bright and large. She was made up exquisitely and wearing a white gown so thin that he could see the dark circles of her nipples through it.
Just. Fucking. Perfect.
Kip went back to the barracks dismayed. He didn’t know what to do. If he told the Rejects that he was responsible for getting Tiziri sent home, they might turn on him, afraid that they would be next. And it was a rational fear, too.
What else could higher stakes next time mean? Kip had no money. All that could mean was that Andross would send home someone closer to Kip—or do something even worse.
The barracks was empty, though. Evidently the other students weren’t back from practicum yet. Kip walked toward his own pallet at the back, double-checking that no one else was present. Four down from his own, he threw open the chest at the foot of one of the empty beds. He dug under the blankets.
He heaved a deep sigh. The dagger was still there.
Covering it back up, he closed the box carefully, making sure nothing looked different than it had before. Then he went to bed.
He slept, dreamlessly for once. He woke amid excitement the next morning. Students were chattering with each other, making no attempt to be quiet for those who were still in bed—though Kip realized as he sat up that he
was
the only one still in bed.
“What’s going on?” he asked, voice scratchy from his long sleep.
“It’s Sponsor Day,” a boy said a few beds down. “No lectures or practicum today. We all meet with our sponsors.”
Kip shuffled to the communal bathroom and washed, gargled with salt water, and ran a comb through his hair a few times until it had something approximating order.
He walked downstairs alone and went to the dining hall. It was still serving food—much finer food than normal, he noticed—but there were few students. Those who were present were sitting with adults. One or two of the adults might have been older siblings, or parents.
It felt like a fist in the middle of his chest. Kip stood with his tray, looking for a place. It didn’t matter where he sat, he was going to be alone. Mother dead. Grandfather disavowed him. Father gone, as he’d been gone Kip’s whole life.
He sat, alone. Ate, alone. He forced himself not to hurry, some part of him not quite enjoying the pain, but reveling in it nonetheless.
These are the hammerfalls that shape a man. And he accepted the blows. So be it.
He finished and went to the library. The librarian, a surprisingly attractive woman, perhaps a weak yellow from her eyes, said, “I’m afraid all our private meeting rooms have been taken by sponsors already, young man.”
“I don’t need a room. I need books. On strategies for Nine Kings.”
“Ah.” Her face lit up. “I think we can help you.”
Rea Siluz was the fourth undersecretary. Usually worked the late shifts. Before Kip would be allowed to even view the books, he had to sign a contract swearing not to bring fire or to draft red luxin in the
library. That done, she seated him at a desk on the shade side of the library, though of course there was plenty of artificial light from yellow lanterns throughout the space. Then she brought him half a dozen books.
“You play much?” Rea asked.
“Only twice. Lost both times, badly.”
She laughed quietly. Her dark hair, tightly curled, was massed in a huge, careful halo around her head, setting off a narrow face, full lips. “Most people lose the first
twenty
times they play.”
Ugh. “That’s not an option for me,” Kip said. “Where should I start?”
“Read these two first, and then study this one. This one has all the cards copied out, so you can refer to it when you don’t understand. The sooner you memorize them, the better you’ll be.”
Oh, boy. Kip settled in.
He read for twelve hours. When he went to the toilet once, as he was coming back, he saw a man hovering over his table, writing down the titles of the books piled there. He saw Kip coming and disappeared. Kip thought briefly of chasing him, but realized that he didn’t know what he would do if he caught the man.
Great, so they’re spying on what I read. Kip didn’t know who “they” were, but he figured it didn’t matter too much.
When he got up to get a late dinner, he went to Rea’s desk. “Can I come back after I eat?”
“You haven’t eaten yet?” She looked tired from working two shifts.
“No, but I’m starving now.”
“I’m sorry, then, but the library is closing in a few minutes.”
Kip looked at the students, who seemed to be giving no indication of leaving anytime soon, and gestured helplessly.
“Those are third- and fourth-years, Kip. Higher years and Blackguard trainees get to study whenever and wherever they want. With so many other duties, some of them don’t even get here until midnight. First-years aren’t trusted that much. You can only be here when librarians are.”
So Kip studied for a few more minutes. When he finally left to go to bed, he was stopped in the hall by Grinwoody. The man grinned wolfishly at him.
Kip hadn’t learned enough. There was no way he could win.
Andross Guile’s chambers were exactly like before, and when Kip
sat, there was a superviolet lantern and a deck of cards. Kip looked through his own cards. The twelve hours had done him no good at all.
“What are the stakes?” he asked.
“Higher, I told you.” Andross Guile said nothing else. He played his first card, setting the scene.
Kip played. He played one of his good cards too early—which he only realized at the end of the game—and got slaughtered. He would have lost regardless, but it was the first time he caught a glimpse of something beyond his own helplessness.
“So what are you going to do to me this time?” he asked.
“Pathetic. Not a drop of Guile blood in you, whinger. You don’t have to lose. You are losing because you choose to lose.”
“Right, I’m choosing to lose. Because it’s so fun.”
“Sarcasm is the sanctum of the stupid. Stop it. The stakes this time were the privilege of eating tomorrow. Tomorrow, you fast. Maybe it will focus your mind. Now, another game.”
“What are the stakes?” Kip asked, stubborn. It told him how little Andross Guile thought of him, though, that he thought not eating was a greater loss to Kip than a girl being sent home and losing everything she’d worked for.
“Higher.” Andross Guile began to shuffle his cards.
“No,” Kip said. “I don’t trust you. I think you’re making up stakes after the fact. I’m not playing until you tell the stakes.”
A thin smile curved Andross Guile’s lips. “Practicum,” he said. “You lose this time, you lose your practicum.”
“I lose that every time you make me come up here,” Kip said.
“Permanently,” Andross Guile said.
Losing the right to go to practicum meant losing the one place where Kip could learn to draft in any sort of organized way. “Can you even do that?”
“There is very little I cannot do.”
If Kip couldn’t learn to draft properly, he had no future. “That’s not fair,” he said. He knew he’d lose.
“I have very little interest in fair. Guiles are interested in victory, not sportsmanship.”
“And if I refuse to play?”
“I’ll have you expelled.”
You asshole. “What do I win if I win?” Kip asked.
“I’ll send that bully Elio home.”
“I don’t care to send him home.”
“Maybe you should,” Andross Guile said.
What was that? A warning?
“I hate you,” Kip said.
“Breaks my heart,” Andross Guile said. “Draw.”
Kip drew. He recognized his opening hand as spectacular. He’d seen this hand in one of the books.
But three rounds in, he lost it. Got befuddled, didn’t move before his timer ran out. He didn’t know how to use even a great hand correctly. Andross Guile had obviously drawn a terrible hand—but he survived the damage Kip was able to do in the early rounds, and then demolished him.
Kip turned over his last counter as he lost, and said, “So what am I supposed to do while everyone else goes to practicum?”
“What do I care?” Andross Guile said. “Figure out other ways to be a failure and a disappointment. By the time my son gets back, he’ll be ready to relinquish this.” He gestured toward Kip, as if he were a cockroach to be swept away.
“You’re old,” Kip said. “How long before you die?”
The Red grinned a feral grin. “So, there’s a little bastard in the little bastard. Good. Now get out.”
Adrasteia was a slave, not a victim. She had crossed the Lily’s Stem, the bridge between the Chromeria and Big Jasper, before the sun had come up. Today was Sponsor Day. That meant no lectures, though the Blackguard would still practice. The Blackguard was too important to take days off. Every student was supposed to meet with her sponsor today, and slaves were no different from anyone else in this.
The difference was that Adrasteia’s sponsor never met with her. Instead, she gave Teia secret little jobs to do on Sponsor Day. Lady Lucretia Verangheti was not an easy mistress.
The vendors in the market were setting up their tents and stalls, laying out carpets, prodding their burros to try to get loads of produce or fish into position. There was a constant stream of people, but with the dawn it would become a flood as house slaves and wives attended to the daily shopping to feed their households. Adrasteia slipped through the mass of people as if she had somewhere to be. She kicked loose one of the laces of her boots and stopped by a wall, knelt on one knee, and pulled her skirt up enough to tie the lace.
She pulled the package out from its space between two bricks, slipped it into her boot, and went on her way. She took a few twisting alleys to make sure she hadn’t been followed—not that she’d ever been followed, but it was part of her orders—and finally found a place between two taller buildings. She pulled the package from her boot, then unrolled the letter.
Lady Verangheti rarely wrote words. She didn’t want to leave her own handwriting to tie her to the crimes she made Adrasteia commit, and she didn’t like trusting slaves or scribes with any more than she had to.
It didn’t matter. Adrasteia knew what was expected.
There was an uncannily accurate drawing of a man—Lady Verangheti could have been quite an artist if she hadn’t thought it beneath her. The next page of impossibly thin rice paper had a drawing of a snuff box, inlaid with a family crest: Herons Rising over a Crescent Moon.
From doing this before, Teia knew she was supposed to steal the snuff box, before tomorrow morning.
Adrasteia was a slave, not a fool: she knew that half the time, the victims were men or women working for Lucretia Verangheti. She’d been caught before, back home.
But she never knew which marks were real and which were decoys. It made sense, she supposed. Training worked best if failure was possible, but not catastrophic. If your trainee failed once and then was useless, you’d lose all the time you’d put into training her. If you weren’t willing for your trainee to ever fail, then you wouldn’t stretch her skills, you wouldn’t teach her where the line was.
But Teia didn’t know which was which. It didn’t matter that much, honestly. She couldn’t treat any of them like they were decoys. The difference being that if she were caught thieving from one of Lucretia’s men, she’d be thrashed, and if she were caught stealing from anyone
else, she’d be thrown out of the Blackguard and the Chromeria and put in jail.
And of course, her father was counting on her. Things went well for the father of a slave doing excellent work. The other half of the statement didn’t even have to be breathed. A slave knew. Her father was a free man; she hadn’t lied to Kip about that part. But that didn’t mean that Lady Verangheti didn’t have power over what happened to him and his debts.
So Teia studied the portrait, memorizing the man’s features. Landed noble, most likely, from the clothes. Balding, short-cropped hair, wide nose, fat necklaces, wide cloak, sword belt, wide sleeves, leather gloves.
Dressed like that, Teia wouldn’t be surprised if he traveled with a bodyguard. She glanced down the alley both ways. Saw no one. She folded up the rice paper. The corners had red and yellow luxin under a thin layer of wax. She rubbed them together, scraping away the wax, and the paper ignited and burned up in a flash. Teia blew away the dust and headed back toward the market.