The Blinding Knife: Lightbringer: Book 2 Read online

  Usef’s chest exploded when a shell hit the building behind them. Impossibly, he’d stood, looking for me, relieved to find me, relieved that I wasn’t injured. His mouth moved. And then he’d died.

  I’d picked up my musket, and his, but instead of turning it on myself, I attacked the bastards. Found the cannon team. Massacred them. And there I broke my halo.

  At first I thought I’d been hit with musket fire. I lost consciousness, and fully believed I was dying. I was content with that.

  I love you, my Purple Bear.

  I woke in a blacked-out wagon, sick as a dim.

  Eventually, perhaps weeks later, the wagon had been commandeered for other uses and set off from Garriston. I recovered, and now find myself daily in this tent. I pick up snatches of conversation from the soldiers and peasants who pass too close, but all I can construct is speculative. Obviously, we’re marching at the direction of this Color Prince and covering a good distance daily, despite what seems a vast caravan.

  From the excitement on certain days, and the smell of smoke that isn’t woodsmoke, I know we must have cut far enough south that they avoided the Karsos Mountains, and that we have invaded Atash.

  Every day, I’m chained and blindfolded carefully before we move, but otherwise I haven’t been accosted. An odd mercy. I’m on the wrong side of forty years old now, but as a warrior, I long ago prepared myself for outrages, should I be captured. Weak men like to humble women, especially great women who make them feel as inferior. I do that constantly.

  So what’s the game?

  I’m a formidable blue warrior, perhaps even a legend. And I’ve broken the halo.

  And there it is. This Color Prince, whoever he is, wants me to join him. He thinks that the longer he lets me sit in my blueness, the more likely I am to go mad and join him.

  It’s been a long time since I’ve been underestimated. I don’t like it any more now than I did as a young woman.

  My tent isn’t large; I can’t stand up straight without brushing my head on the fabric. My hands are manacled in front of me, and the manacles attach to the iron collar around my neck. My legs are hobbled with chains around my ankles, held apart by an iron pole.

  All in all, it gives me reasonable freedom of movement, but little possibility of attacking anyone. Truth is, I’m no Blackguard: I wouldn’t know how to attack someone with my hands even were I free. Well, I know a few punches, but that’s a far different thing than being dangerous. Truth is, without drafting, I’m simply another helpless woman.

  But I’m not ready to give up drafting yet.

  They haven’t taken my ring—which absolutely must mean that the Color Prince intends to recruit me. They’d taken a long, hard look at the ruby on my finger, another at the broken, pure blue halo in my eyes, and let me keep it.

  It takes me two days to form my plan. The tent is red, so the light that comes through it keeps me from panicking like darkness would, but it’s worthless to me for drafting. However, the tent is also made of cloth. Standing on tiptoe, I can pull a bit of the tent that is usually covered by the frame underneath it and gnaw on it. It takes me two days to chew a hole big enough to let in a tiny spotlight of clear, white light—but still small enough to be hidden to the eyes of those who fold up the tent every morning.

  The next day, I nearly panick when I find that the hole isn’t there. But there is no punishment, no mention of it. There must be more than one blue drafter imprisoned as I am; our tents had merely been switched during the march.

  I begin again. This time, I’m luckier: I keep my own tent. On the twelfth day, the army takes one of its daylong breaks, camping in one spot for some kind of festival I can dimly overhear. No matter: I’m ready, and the tent has been aligned north-south, the most advantageous way with where I’d chewed the hole. I can peek out.

  Above the tents is a large white canopy. I’d thought it had merely been clouds overhead, diffusing the blueness. Clouds that might burn off under Orholam’s gaze and give me the blessed blue of pure sky. It is white canvas instead, allowing in light, but blocking my color. If I had spectacles, it wouldn’t matter. I don’t. I’m no Prism; white is as useless to me as no light at all. So this Color Prince isn’t stupid. He must know the tents are vulnerable. I hate him and admire him for it at the same time. But it doesn’t dissuade me.

  Silently blessing Usef for giving me the ring, I brace myself and begin slamming the “ruby” against my manacle. After a dozen attempts, I hit it right, and the top half of the jewel shears off, breaking the glue that held it in place. I spend the next twenty minutes searching my tent for the fragment that split off.

  After I find it, I put it in my mouth, moistening the glue. The red half of the ring is useless to me, but if I’m interrupted I’ll need to put it back onto my ring as quickly as possible.

  The bottom half of the ring is sapphire blue. It’s tiny, but if it were larger, it wouldn’t have escaped my gaolers’ notice. I pull the fabric of the tent to the left of the frame, slowly, carefully. Two hours before noon, the sun is high enough that pure light pours through it in a tiny speck, a spotlight, a pinprick of power. The fact that my hands are chained to my neck becomes another blessing, a gift from the distant Orholam. It allows me to rest my hands and yet keep them in place.

  I bathe my ring in that tiny spotlight, and it sends me thready blue power.

  It takes hours, hours of barely blinking, of shifting minutely every minute as Orholam’s Eye climbs to the peak of the heavens and then begins its slow descent.

  With evening coming, and the certain arrival of the steward who checks on me, I bring the red glass chip to the front of my mouth and slowly reaffix it to the ring. Then I carefully move the blue luxin around beneath my skin, packing it so that it will inhabit my skin only under my clothing. I haven’t soaked up much, despite the hours, but if my steward sees it, all my efforts will have been in vain. So I move the luxin into my back and butt and thighs. They have respected my privacy so far, and if they do so for one more night…

  The steward comes. He sniffs once or twice, but seems to think he is allergic to something in “this damned country.” He leaves me the daily ration. Then comes and takes the plate away when I’m finished.

  He will come again at curfew. It gives me two hours. Two hours is plenty of time to die.

  With trembling hands, I draft a tiny, sharp knife of blue luxin. More like a nail, really. It isn’t as dramatic as slashing my wrists, but cut wrists can be bound, my life saved. A nail driven through my own heart? That is irrevocable, and reasonably quick. Even if my flesh betrays me and I cry out, there will be no saving me.

  I should have died in Garriston. I should have died with Usef. I hadn’t told Usef that Gavin is really Dazen. I hadn’t trusted how he’d respond. I regret that now. He should have known for whom he died.

  But no. He died for me. He didn’t care about this war. He didn’t care about Orholam. He cared about doing what is right, gods or no gods, Chromeria or no. And he cared about me. I should have told him. I should have trusted him. It was a betrayal.

  I’m sorry, Usef. I’ll come see you and apologize in person. In person? In spirit?

  Usef didn’t believe in any of that. I hope the afterlife has been a pleasant surprise for my big bear.

  I hold the point of the nail over my chest. Gavin Guile—well, Dazen Guile—gave a special dispensation to suicide for those who broke the halo, but it has been drummed into me for all my life that self-murder is as much murder as any other, and it is hard to disregard the thought. No, this isn’t murder. I am a casualty of war.

  “Lord of Light, if this be sin, forgive me. If this be sacrilege, forgive your errant daughter.” Taking a deep breath, I brace myself.

  But still I don’t press the nail home.

  I am a wight. I know it. I felt the halo break. I am doomed. I will go mad. I might already be mad.

  But I don’t feel mad. I feel remarkably like… myself.

  Maybe that is the sign that
I am mad—that I can’t see my own madness. But that doesn’t make sense. Anyone in the world might be mad if thinking you aren’t mad is a valid criterion.

  Maybe blue is seducing me. Yes. Maybe it is.

  But if so, it is a logician’s seduction, not a lothario’s. If the blue is some separate spirit, whispering sweet sins in my ears, I ought to be hearing them. Instead, I simply have the vague reservation that what I’ve been taught doesn’t align correctly with what I’m experiencing.

  I consider a thought that I had found disgusting in the past: remaking myself with blue luxin.

  Still sounds disgusting.

  How about something more borderline, like making permanent blue caps for my eyes, to function as blue lenses?

  That sounds difficult. If you cut off the eyes from air, they don’t do well, that has been proven, but if you leave air holes—

  I’m getting caught up in the problems. Just like I always have. So… not changed. Not changed at all.

  Maybe it is the drafting that changes you. Maybe once you start drafting blue after breaking the halo, it runs away with you. But I drafted blue just now. Small amounts, sure. But I don’t feel like I’m stark raving anything.

  I can kill myself. I see that now. The path is open, and I can take it when it’s time.

  But to suicide for no purpose? That makes no sense. How would that honor Orholam, who gave light and life?

  If I wait, I might get a chance to kill the Color Prince himself. I might be able to repay this man fully for murdering Usef. Yes, that. That is reasonable.

  The hard knot in my chest finally relaxes. I dissolve the nail and draft a very small straw that I poke through the hole in the tent. If the tent smells like blue luxin, they’ll search me, and they’ll find the hole and the ring. I have to cover up even the faint smell of chalky luxin. I draw the blue dust into my mouth and puff it out into the night air. Then I swallow the gritty bits that remain, swishing the watered wine they gave me around my mouth so none remain stuck in my teeth.

  I will live. I will fight another day. And I will unravel the mysteries of the halo. I lie down, at peace, and sleep.

  As his fingers slowly came off the five points, he realized she didn’t weep for Usef. Hadn’t wept for him since he died. It never occurred to her.

  Chapter 64

  Kip was soaked to the skin. The cold was an invading army, crossing every border of his skin, laying waste. Maybe it had invaded his brain first, making him sluggish, stupid. His fists were the only points of warmth on his whole body, those fired by pain. He’d ripped open the scars on his left hand. Didn’t remember how.

  He felt something wash down onto his cheek from the rain, brushed it away. Looked at it in his hand. What the—

  A chill deeper than the cold rain rushing down his spine. Orholam have mercy. It was a piece of Niah’s brain, washed clean by the rain, gray and blue. It had been stuck to his face since her head had been blown apart. Kip convulsed, flung it away.

  He had to get out of here. First, he wrapped the cloaks around his body. Without whatever magic had animated them before, they now seemed like very pale, worn cloaks. Nothing special. The gold chokers dangled quite naturally inside the cloak, as if they were often hidden from sight that way. Kip pulled the hood up. The woman’s cloak was too small to fit him comfortably, but he made it work. They were very thin, almost silky, and not fully waterproof, but they were better than nothing. Kip didn’t even open the box of cards—not in this rain.

  Last, he picked up the knife. He hadn’t put it in its sheath, just blandly, blindly carried both when he’d picked up Janus Borig and all the other stuff he’d pulled out of the burning house like a looter. But there was something off. He swore the sheath was too short for the blade. No, it couldn’t be.

  He sheathed the blade, and as he pushed it home, lightning flashed, illuminating the entire alley, blinding him momentarily. Blinking, he stared at the sheathed blade. The sheath fit perfectly. Still, he swore it looked longer and wider than it had been before.

  “Fire! Fire!”

  Someone went running past Kip’s alley, and suddenly he was starkly aware that he was standing over the body of an old woman who’d been stabbed to death—with a knife in his hand, in an area that was going to be swarming with people soon.

  And so it was. Kip took off, and saw dozens, hundreds of people come out into the streets. “Lightning strike! Fire!” people shouted, pounding on the doors of their neighbors.

  In a city, fire was everyone’s problem, even in a storm. The storm was a blessing, of course, the rains helping the crowds extinguish the fires, but everyone turned out to battle the blaze lest it spread.

  Kip got out of the neighborhood, made his way back toward the great bridge, the Lily’s Stem, but didn’t cross. He’d gone to seek Janus Borig to ask her where to hide a great treasure: now he had four treasures.

  What the hell was he doing with four treasures?

  The more relevant question was what the hell was he going to do with four treasures?

  He stood for a minute in the rain, probably wealthy beyond the dreams of satrapahs and queens, and he couldn’t afford a dry place to lay his head.

  Ironfist. If Kip could get to him.

  He walked across the bridge, tucking the dagger in his belt and covering it up, but making sure he could reach it quickly if he needed to.

  There was no one outside except a pair of guards standing in their sentry boxes to avoid the rain, and they didn’t look interested, though Kip’s imagination made him paranoid. He made it to the lift without incident.

  Kip had been a child for too long. He’d come to the Chromeria, and as soon as Andross Guile had found out about him, an assassin had tried to throw him off the tower. By playing the black cards, Kip must have revealed that Janus Borig had helped him defeat Andross Guile in a game. And she’d been murdered almost immediately.

  With the amount of time that Kip had spent with the old man, it was tempting to humanize him, to believe that Andross might feel something for Kip. It wasn’t true. There were monsters in the world, and Andross Guile was one of them.

  Kip got off the elevator a few levels short of the top of the Prism’s Tower. The Blackguards made their barracks here.

  The first man he saw was a skinny Ilytian with a burn scar across one cheek, sitting on his bed, reading. A few other men were dicing a ways back in a common area, others were sharing rumors about assassinations in Abornea from comfortable chairs. “This area is for Blackguards only, boy,” the man said.

  “I need to see Ironfist,” Kip said. “I’m Kip, Gavin’s bastard. It’s an emergency. I may be in danger. And it’s secret.”

  Blackguards didn’t get to be Blackguards by being indecisive. The man stood. “No one will harm you here. I’ll take you to the commander’s quarters. He’s out on rounds right now—he always works longer than any of us—but he’s usually back by an hour after midnight.”

  An hour after midnight? Of course. Kip hadn’t realized that his own midnight training sessions with Ironfist were actually part of the man’s normal workday—he worked from dawn until an hour after midnight. Every day.

  The Blackguard walked Kip past the others, who looked askance but didn’t object, and took Kip to a small room. He opened the door, which wasn’t locked.

  “No one except the commander will get in while any of us live.” He hesitated, then said, “Do please note that if you steal anything from this room, the consequences will be dire.”

  “Yes, yes, thank you. Of course,” Kip said.

  He felt a huge wave of relief, quickly replaced by exhaustion and then discomfort as he looked around Ironfist’s room.

  For some reason, it felt oddly intimate to be here. Kip had never really imagined the huge Blackguard commander as a person who had a room. Ridiculous thought, of course. Where’d you figure he sleeps, Kip?

  The room fit the man: tidy, not large despite his exalted position, finely carved lean black oak chairs with no c
ushions, the narrow bed covered with a green-and-black-checkered blanket, a rack of many fine weapons on one wall and one gorgeous painting opposite the bed. It was of a young woman, hair knotted and piled atop her head, dark eyes glimmering with orange halos, beautiful, chin lifted, hint of a playful twist to her lips. Kip didn’t know anything about painting, but it was clear even to his untrained eye that this was exquisite.

  A knock on the door interrupted his reverie. He opened it. The solemn Blackguard handed him a towel. “He lets guests sit in that chair,” the man said, pointing. “You can pull it by the fire. Is it the kind of emergency where we need to send runners for him, or can you wait?”

  “Wait. Waiting is fine,” Kip said. “Thank you.”

  The door closed with a click, and Kip’s heart went out of him. He wanted to be a Blackguard so much he thought he’d die if he didn’t make it. Quiet and calm in the face of an emergency, decisive in the face of uncertainty, dangerous, masterful, confident.

  He toweled off as well as he could, then stretched the two cloaks out to dry and sat in the chair by the fire.

  Standing there in the warmth of the fire, Kip was struck by a thought. He drafted sub-red directly from the fire and pulled it through his skin. He was warm instantly. He could, in fact, dry his clothes—though not too quickly or he’d burn himself. Hell, if he weren’t such a moron, he could have gone back into the building when it was on fire. He could have drafted the heat away from himself—and then what? Recovered a few treasures and still been inside the building when it exploded? Maybe he could have drafted shields around the kegs of black powder. If he’d been thinking.

  He hadn’t even thought to draft himself an umbrella on his way back to the Chromeria to stay dry. It simply hadn’t occurred to him. He just wasn’t mentally fast enough for this. A failure, stupid, his mother would say.