Then they rounded a corner. What had looked like it would lead to an open, wide street was gated and chained. There was only the narrow street they’d entered from, and one alley out of the wide space between houses. In the alley, there had to be twenty men. Aram swore.
“Anyone feel like dropping three spots?” Kip asked.
No one answered. That was a no. Not this close to the final test. They’d take a beating if they had to, but none of them was going to just give up.
Kip stepped forward. He braced his feet.
“Semicircle,” Cruxer said. “I got point. Kip, you stand on that rock, you should be able to keep drafting while we fight. The rest of us, don’t let anyone into the middle of our semicircle.”
They formed up as Kip gathered his will. The men in the alley were jogging forward now, constrained in the tight space. Kip didn’t know
what he was going to do until he was already drafting the big green ball into his fist. It was stupid. If he’d had the practicum, there would be a hundred different things he could do that would work better—but he hadn’t. He knew how to do this. Fine. He was the ignorant boy from Tyrea who didn’t know any better. He’d show them.
The ball swelled bigger than his head and Kip threw his hands forward with a yell.
The green luxin ball shot out at chest level at great speed. For once, Kip didn’t fall on his butt from the recoil. In the confines of the alley, the men didn’t have anywhere to dodge. The ball glanced off a man in the front row and then ricocheted back and forth. Five or ten went down as the rest surged into the open space.
Kip extended his other hand, gathering the blue into a spear point, ready to shoot it through the men.
You can’t kill them! The blue rationality cut through the wildness, and Kip hesitated. He almost lost his concentration and the blue completely, but recovered.
Pop, pop, pop!
He shot little blue balls at the charging men, low, at their legs. One man tried to jump the projectile, got tripped in midair and landed on his face. Others took them in the knees, and the balls shattered, shooting glassine shrapnel through their clothing.
It was too much for simple street thugs. Even as they got into the range where Kip’s drafting would be useless and their own numbers would give them the victory, the charge faltered. The thugs fled, not even pausing to help their injured.
Kip hurriedly put on his green spectacles—stupid! He’d forgotten to put them on before the fight!—and drew in more green. He drafted another green ball into his hands and just held it there, trying to look threatening.
The injured pulled themselves to their feet and followed after their comrades, but down the alley in the dark half-light between buildings, Kip saw one thin figure standing alone, lifting something, peering around the wounded men staggering through the alley.
“Kip,” Lucia said, clapping him on the shoulder. She was grinning, impish, delighted. “You were amazing! That was the best—”
From the alley, the briefest flash, a puff of white smoke lit from behind as Lucia stepped into Kip’s line of sight.
Something warm splashed over Kip’s face, blotted out his vision.
He lost the green. Lucia fell into him heavily, but even as she hit him—in that fraction of a second—he knew something was terribly wrong.
They fell together. Kip caught her and she lay in his arms, half of her neck torn out by the musket ball, her body not yet aware death was a foregone conclusion, pumping blood, blood, blood.
They didn’t move. Someone shrieked. For once, even Cruxer didn’t know what to do. Desperately, he pulled Lucia out of Kip’s arms and held her himself.
Within two minutes, the Blackguards arrived. Then it was orders, investigation, questions that Kip answered numbly. Blackguards armed with the thinnest description ran to see if they could apprehend the murderer. Kip stood, dazed. Someone had given him a towel and rubbed much of the blood off his face. He was still holding that bloody towel, limply, standing, not knowing what to do with himself.
He looked at Cruxer, still cradling Lucia’s body, weeping, and he knew that the boy had been in love with her.
Orholam have mercy.
Kip couldn’t stop thinking the stupidest thing: I didn’t even hear the shot. I didn’t even hear it.
Karris thought she knew exactly where Gavin would be. If he wasn’t in his room, that meant he’d drafted a bonnet and jumped off the Prism’s Tower. He loved doing that. Show-off. And because no one had known he was fleeing, no one would have reported him leaving. They wouldn’t have known it was important.
She checked the library first, though, just in case she was wrong. She walked past the practicum rooms, where she heard boys’ voices, cursing as their drafting failed. She checked his personal training room below the tower. Then she headed up to the ground floor. She crossed the Lily’s Stem, going against the flow of people who came in
every morning with the dawn to work in the seven towers of the Chromeria, and cut down-island. She knew the other Blackguards had already fanned out across both islands, looking for him. With war declared, none of them were happy to have their Prism off by himself with no guards. The big idiot.
Still, Karris felt curiously alive. She felt as if, for the first time in years, she had a future. Life felt possible now. Promising.
She made her way toward the east bay. The fishing boats were already out, though it was barely light. Men and women were pressing seaweed flat to dry in the sun. The tide was just coming in, and she saw several drunken sailors staggering back toward their ships, doubtless overindulging to fortify themselves for the weeks or months of privation they’d face on the sea.
A gang of galley slaves, chained at their wrists to a long pole, were walking together toward the same ships. They looked gaunt and dirty, with long stringy muscles and no fat. One coughed a deep, unhealthy rattle as they passed.
A scent in the air arrested Karris, and she couldn’t help but stop at a little storefront she hadn’t been to in years. They kept slowly simmering pots of kopi, and at this time of morning it was fresh and beautiful. Especially when you’d been up most of the night.
“Ah, my favorite Blackguard!” Jalal said. He was a round little butterball of Parian. Karris thought he’d had more teeth the last time she’d been here. “Watch Captain…” He snapped his fingers.
“White Oak,” she said, grinning.
“Ah, yes! But I find redemption here!” He grabbed a cheap clay cup and a fresh wedge of onion and ladled hot kopi into it. He poured out some of the steaming hot liquid into a clean saucer, swirled it, put it back into the cup, and repeated the saucering until the kopi was the perfect temperature. Then he fished out the onion wedge and spooned in half a spoonful of Ilytian sugar.
“Brilliant,” Karris said. “You remembered.”
“A kopi man never forgets.” He tapped his forehead with his index finger thrice, thinking. “Ah, ah!” Then he produced the kind of small sweet roll that Karris liked. “Yes?”
She smiled. “You’re a wonder.” It was perfect. Exactly as she’d had years ago, and the kopi was wonderful.
She paid, feeling enlivened by the stimulant and the food, and headed toward Ebon’s Hill. There was an estate there that had a
gorgeous view of the bay and the rising sun. Dazen had shown it to her when they were first courting.
He hadn’t knocked on the door or anything so civil. Instead, he’d shown her how to climb up onto the fence, and from there onto the bulbous dome roof of a neighbor’s house. It was quiet, peaceful, and for a young teenage girl, it had felt naughty.
They’d kissed there for the very first time, after holding hands all night, talking.
How was she going to broach the topic, though? “Gavin, you big idiot, I’ve known you’re Dazen for months”? No. She’d merely sit down next to him, watch the sun rise, and then say, “I remember our first kiss here.”
The thought of throwing Gavin so far off kilter was more than a little pleasing.
Truth was, they were going to have to do a lot of work. A lot of the lies he’d told her made sense to her now, but not all of them, and knowing why someone had lied to you was different than understanding it, different by far than forgiving it.
But still, she was eager to start living. Scary as it was. Besides, he’d said he loved her, hadn’t he? It wasn’t like she was going out on a limb.
She rounded the last corner and found herself on her ass, sitting on the ground. It took her a moment to realize she’d been hit in the face. And then a gang of men gathered around her, hitting, hitting, hitting.
She kicked, she swung, she screamed, but her training did little for her. There were a dozen men, all big, and they’d sealed off any form of escape. Her speed was no use to her on the ground. Her weapons expertise no good with her weapons torn away.
Her rage was undercut by humiliation, fear. She was a Blackguard. How could she let herself be taken off guard? How could she be so terrified? She tried to punch, tried to kick, but each of her limbs was trapped. She thrashed. A foot caught her in the kidney. Black stars exploded in white skies. She wasn’t supposed to be afraid; men were supposed to fear her. A face leaned close, saying something, and she whipped her head forward, shattering his nose, making his blood explode all over her. She twisted an arm, shattered a man’s elbow. Then her head rebounded off the paving stones from a blow
she never even saw. And then all emotions faded as she lost her grip on consciousness—and still the beating continued, continued, continued.
“Blackguards die. Death is our companion,” Commander Ironfist said, addressing the scrubs in one of their little training buildings. “Yesterday, one of our own was killed. Lucia.”
The remaining twenty scrubs had been given the night off after Lucia’s death, but they had been told to be here in formation, first thing in the morning, or be kicked out. All had come.
“Lucia had little chance of making it into our company.” The commander paused, letting that sink in. “That’s right. In the harsh light of death, other people lie. Other people lie because they fear death, and fear that when they die, others will speak the truth about them. Our challenge is to live in such a way that the truth is no embarrassment. Lucia wasn’t a great fighter, but she was brave and she was honorable and she didn’t deserve to be murdered by some coward with a musket. We’ll find him. We’re out looking for him now. And when we find him, we’ll kill him. In the meantime, we have work to do. We’re the Blackguard. We always have work to do. Trainer?”
Trainer Fisk came before the class, but Kip looked over to Cruxer. The boy’s face was like iron.
“War will be your teacher,” Trainer Fisk said. “We’re going to war. As some of you may know, the Spectrum has decided to send us to defend Ru. We’ve seen it coming. Now it’s here. We’d planned to have two more weeks of training before we selected the trainees out of your class. Especially after Lucia was killed. But Blackguards don’t stand still. Better we don’t, anyway. The final round of testing is today. I know that some of you might be beat up from fighting yesterday. Sorry. Tough. Your class is down to twenty. Fourteen will become Blackguard trainees.” He paused.
“Those of you who get cut, you can try again next season. And I hope you will. Despite that we’re taking twice as many initiates as we usually do, this has been an unexpectedly fine class. Your odds to pass next time are very good. You’ll be seeded at the top of that class, above the legacies.” He scowled. “Now, all of you, to the grounds, double-time!”
When they arrived, jogging smartly in line, Kip saw that there were perhaps two thousand spectators ready to watch them. Of those, maybe only a third were full Blackguards or Blackguard trainees in the years ahead of Kip’s class. Kip realized that he wasn’t winded from the jog. He was a long way from the physical condition the best students were in, but he was getting stronger. Slowly.
He was also glad that Teia had told him today would probably be the final test. Kip had been able to hide the dagger in the Prism’s training room, so he didn’t have to wear it on his ankle. And no one could get in there.
As always, they took their places, and Trainer Fisk stood before them to give them the rules. “You pick your colors. No spectacles. No weapons. As before, you can challenge three places above you. You win their token, you can challenge again. Those at the bottom get to challenge first. Mercy or unconsciousness, as judged by me. We know you want to win, and that everything is riding on these fights for some of you, but anyone who maims an opponent during testing will be kicked out. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” the scrubs said in unison. There was a current in the air, like before a lightning storm. This test separated scrubs from Blackguards. Even if they washed out or got injured before final vows, if they made it through today, they would forever have that rare badge of honor: Blackguard. Those who were slaves who made it through today’s test would have their contracts put in escrow by the Chromeria itself. Nothing would be allowed to interfere with their training until they washed out or stood to take their final vows and had their price paid by the Chromeria itself. The price they commanded would make their masters wealthy, but the sale itself wasn’t voluntary. They would be instantly in a different class. They would, of course, still owe their obedience to the Blackguard, and would serve until retirement. But even a Blackguard slave was a Blackguard. Internally, there was no difference in duties or in privileges: a woman from a hundred generations of nobles like Karris White Oak served on exactly the
same schedule as Pan Harl, whose ancestors had been slaves for eight of the last ten generations.