The Blinding Knife Read online

  Kip understood. “Which leaves no one.”

  “We’re trying to stop the war before it engulfs everyone.”

  “How do you stop a war?” Kip asked.

  “You win. So you do your part, and I’ll do mine.”

  “How long do I have?” Kip asked. A small part of him rebelled. It wasn’t fair to ask a boy to do this. It wasn’t what you’d ask of a son. But Kip was only a son by his father’s grace. He was an unwanted bastard, and if Gavin held the boy he’d never known at arm’s length, how could Kip blame him?

  “Depends on how long the Color Prince licks his wounds in Garriston. It’s probably too much to hope he’ll stay the winter, so he’ll most likely head west. I imagine Idoss will hold him off for a few months. Losing Idoss should be enough to move the Spectrum. If not… six months, Kip. Eight if we’re lucky. If we don’t save the city of Ru, he’ll get their saltpeter caves and iron mines and we’ll be plunged into a war worse than the False Prism’s War, and unlikely to be as brief.”

  Kip was in so far over his head he couldn’t even see the surface. “Why me?” he asked.

  “Because audacity is a young man’s sword. Daring is a gun. And, to be blunt, if you fail in non-spectacular fashion, you’ll merely look like a petty child. That would damage your reputation but not mine. And it won’t get either of us killed. You’re a good weapon because to look at you, you look like a child, an affable boy who wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  Affable. Code for “fat and nice.” Next I’ll be “jolly.” “I’m so unlikely that I’m perfect?” Kip said.

  “Exactly.”

  “I thought that once, right before I ran away from Garriston.” Kip had thought no one would think a child would come to spy on the Color Prince and rescue Liv. That had turned out well.

  “But you’re stronger now.”

  “That was two weeks ago!”

  Gavin laughed.

  “Doesn’t that tell you something?” Kip insisted.

  Gavin smiled. “It should tell you something, too.”

  “What?” Kip asked.

  Gavin got serious. “That I believe in you.”

  Kip wasn’t sure what to do with that, not when Gavin delivered it straight. He couldn’t laugh it off, couldn’t make a joke out of it. It was too obviously true, and it warmed him. Kip grimaced. “You’re really good at this, aren’t you?”

  Gavin rubbed Kip’s head. “Almost as good as I think I am.” He grinned. “You know, Kip, when this is all over…” He let the words fall away, and his good humor went with them.

  “It’s never going to be over, is it?” Kip asked.

  The Prism took a deep breath. “Not the way I’d like.”

  “Are we going to lose?” Kip asked.

  Gavin was quiet for a while. He shrugged and smirked. “Odds are.” He wrapped an arm around Kip’s wide shoulders, squeezed, released him. “But odds are for defying.”

  Chapter 8

  Karris had all the gear packed and ready. Gavin, she assumed, would draft another skimmer rather than take one of the ships. He always was an impatient man. She checked her gear again to calm her nerves. She hated thinking she’d forgotten something. Hated not knowing what to prepare for but trying to pack light.

  Of course, Gavin would come out and say, “Let’s go!” and try to leave immediately. As if, having invented a way to cross the entire Cerulean Sea in a day and save a month of sailing, he didn’t have an extra hour or two for packing.

  Why had she volunteered for this again?

  Because you don’t have anything better to do than saving the world and revealing the cancer at its heart.

  There was that.

  Gavin came onto the deck, and Karris was struck once again by how every eye turned to him. She supposed that most of the people on this ship were common folk, and they would have turned to see even Garriston’s Governor Crassos, hated as he had been. And perhaps they would have stared as worshipfully at any Prism, but she doubted it. Gavin’s title was special, but something in her believed that he would have attracted every eye on deck even if he’d been a cabin boy. Now that he’d saved all their lives again, she was surprised that they didn’t spontaneously burst out into applause.

  The sailors burst out into applause.

  Son of a bitch.

  Two Blackguards fell in beside him as he came out the door. Someone must have shouted the word that the Prism was making an appearance, because in moments, people were piling out onto the deck. The captain, a stalwart rotund Ruthgari, made no attempt to stop them or get his sailors back to work. They nearly trampled each other on their way out of the cabins below, and sailors, soldiers, traders, nobles, and refugee peasants alike came out to get a look at their Prism.

  He’d been on board with them for the last week, and he’d been in Garriston with them before that. It wasn’t like he’d changed. But somehow where he’d been an important man before, now he was theirs. Their savior. Pitting himself against a sea demon and winning had made Gavin larger than life.

  If Karris hadn’t seen with her own eyes how close Gavin had come to getting eaten, she might have had the cynicism to think he had arranged the whole thing.

  The people were packed on the deck—every ship had been filled to bursting in order to get the refugees out of Garriston before the Color Prince took over—and all of them were talking to each other, sharing inanities like, “Do you see him? Is he saying anything?”

  Gavin made his way over to Karris, Blackguards in tow. They, like she, scanned the crowd for threats. Gavin said, “Milady, would you do me the honor of accompanying me on a small expedition?”

  What do you do when someone asks you kindly to do what you’ve already wheedled and schemed for? “I would be… delighted,” Karris said.

  “Excellent.” Gavin smiled without any hint of irony. He did have a nice smile. The worm.

  He raised his hands. “My people!” he said. He had a commander’s voice, an orator’s voice with the trick of somehow speaking so loudly and clearly that everyone could understand him without his seeming to shout. “My people! I leave you today, but only for a time. I go to make a place for you. I go ahead of you. And now I ask you to be fearless and grow strong. There are days ahead that will test us all. There is work that only you can do, though I will help as I can. I’m leaving General Danavis in charge. He has my full trust. He will lead well.”

  The words walked a narrow line, and he surely knew it. What he was describing without precisely saying was that he was their promachos—the title a Prism could be given during war. But the promachia could only be instituted by the order of the entire Spectrum. Gavin had been promachos during the war with his brother, and had been relieved of the title in less than six months. To be a promachos was to be emperor in truth.

  It was one of the very things the Blackguard had been created to protect against.

  At the same time, what else was Gavin going to tell all these people? That he was leaving and they were going to have to fend for themselves? They had nothing. They’d left everything in Garriston.

  He kept talking, and Karris kept scanning the crowd. Ironfist had taught them the telltales for spotting an assassin, of course. Someone who was sweating profusely, shifting awkwardly, anyone who was keeping their hands concealed in such a way that they might be hiding something. For Karris, it was more of a feeling. An assassin would feel out of place. Someone who wasn’t listening, because they didn’t care what was said. Someone who only cared about his own mission.

  Karris realized two things at the same time. First, that was exactly what she was doing. Second, there were at least fifty Blackguards on deck. Not to mention a couple of hundred fanatical common folk who would tear apart anyone who even dared offend their Prism. If there were a perfect moment to not attempt an assassination, this would be it.

  Gavin drafted a set of steps from the deck down to the water and drafted a yellow-hulled scull onto the water, complete with rowing apparatus for two.

&nb
sp; The Blackguards on duty were Ahhanen and Djur. Neither man looked pleased, but they saluted Karris, transferring protection to her. Life, light, purpose.

  Gavin descended the steps and took his place. He didn’t offer Karris a hand onto the scull, which she appreciated. Now, in this, they weren’t some lord and a lady. She was his protector, thank you very much.

  As she took her place on the oars, she said, “No blue this time, huh?” The last time they’d sculled together, she’d accused him of using blue luxin for the hull because blue was practically invisible against the waves and it had unnerved her.

  He grunted.

  She shouldn’t have said it. He’d doubtless drafted the scull from yellow to be kind to her. She’d complained about what he’d done last time, so this time he was doing it differently. And she’d thrown it in his face. Nice, Karris.

  They pushed off and sculled together in silence, heading west. When they were half a league out, Gavin signaled that they should stop.

  “I showed them all the skimmer yesterday, but there was a lot going on,” he said. A lot going on. She supposed that was one way to describe the panic fifty thousand helpless people felt when they realize they’re under attack by a sea demon and then watching their Prism lure it away from them single-handedly, using magic the likes of which no one had ever seen. “I didn’t want to give all the drafters a tutorial today in how to make one for themselves. Just because a secret’s going to get out eventually doesn’t mean you need to shout it from the rooftops.” He stopped, seeming to realize that she might not be the person to say that to.

  “So where are we going?” Karris asked. She didn’t want to talk about that now either.

  “I told my people I’d go prepare a place for them.”

  “You tell people things all the time.”

  Gavin opened his mouth, hesitated. Licked his lips. Didn’t say whatever he was going to say. “I deserved that. Point is, I’ve got fifty thousand refugees. If we put them in one of the little Tyrean coastal towns, they’ll overwhelm the locals, and still be just a short march down the road for the Color Prince. They’ll be defenseless, and they’ll starve to death even if he doesn’t come after them. Point is, mostly for unfair reasons, no one will want to help a bunch of Tyreans.”

  “So you’ve come up with an elaborate solution.”

  “Not elaborate. Elegant. Fine, I suppose you could call it elaborate, too.” He began drafting the scoops and straws for the skimmer. “I’m going to put them on Seers Island.”

  He was officially mad. Karris said, “That entire island is ringed with reefs. No one can get ships in there.”

  “I can.”

  “And how do the Seers feel about this?” she demanded.

  “Surprised, I’d guess. I haven’t told them yet.”

  “Oh, wonderful.”

  “Who knows?” Gavin said. “They are Seers. Maybe they’ve foretold my coming.” His grin withered in the heat of her disapproval. He handed over one of the reeds and they began skimming.

  Last time they’d skimmed together, they had held hands, Karris squeezing out the rhythm so that they would be in time with each other. This time he didn’t even extend his hand toward her. Good, it saved her the trouble of rejecting it.

  Regardless, they found their rhythm and began cruising across the surface of the sea. Within half an hour, the mountains of Seers Island came into view. But they were farther away than they appeared, and it took hours before Gavin and Karris approached the island. Even then, Gavin didn’t head straight in. He turned south of the island, keeping between it and Tyrea, whose Karsos Mountains were just visible, purple in the distance.

  Finally, Gavin turned them north, toward a huge bay. It was a shallow crescent, big enough for Gavin’s entire fleet to fit into, but too wide in Karris’s half-educated opinion to offer protection from the winter storms that would rip between the island and the mainland in a few months.

  There were no known settlements. This island was taboo, forbidden, holy. Lucidonius had given it to the Seers hundreds of years ago. And, of course, it was surrounded by reefs that would destroy any ship with a greater displacement than a canoe or a skimmer, and even those could only make it in at high tide.

  As they came in closer, skimming a mere hand’s breadth over the coral, Karris saw an enormous pier jutting from the undeveloped shore. A pier that gleamed like gold—a pier of solid yellow luxin. She was about to comment to Gavin about it—Had he created this? Was this where he’d been going in the last few days?—when she saw something else.

  There were a couple of hundred armed men and women standing on the beach in an unruly mob.

  “Gavin, those people look angry.”

  Amused, Gavin lifted his eyebrows momentarily. “Not as angry as they’re going to be.” And then, heedless, he beached the skimmer directly in front of the mob.

  Chapter 9

  “Commander, could I talk with you for a moment?” Kip asked.

  After Gavin and Karris left, Commander Ironfist and the Blackguards had taken over the fastest galleass in the fleet and, taking Kip, had headed for the Chromeria.

  Everyone had been busy all the time for the first few days, with the Blackguards following the sailors’ lead and trying to learn their craft. Commander Ironfist didn’t want his Guards to sit idle, and given the chance to master some new skill, they dove right in. The sailors grumbled at first, but were eventually won over by how quickly the Blackguards learned.

  For those who weren’t on duty, Ironfist supervised shifts of sparring and calisthenics on the galleass’s small castle. Kip was allowed to watch, but mostly he tried to keep out of the way. It had taken him days to figure out when the commander would have a few empty minutes for Kip to bother him.

  The commander looked at Kip. Nodded. Walked back into the cabin the captain was sharing with him for his work.

  Kip had mustered his courage, but now he found it leaking away as they came into the small room and sat at a little table. “Sir, I… During the battle at Garriston, I—Well, some of it doesn’t seem real, like I’m remembering things that couldn’t really have happened, do you know what I—But that’s not what I…” Kip was being stupid, inarticulate. He flexed with his bandaged hand. It hurt. “I killed the king—satrap—whatever. When I did it, Master Danavis—I mean, General Danavis—shouted at me, saying I’d fouled everything. I didn’t mean to disobey, it just didn’t—I don’t know, maybe I did mean to disobey.” The words wouldn’t come out right. He felt like he was veering all over the place. He’d killed people, and part of him had liked it. Like he was smashing in the faces of those who wouldn’t take him seriously. Except that he had literally smashed faces in, and when he thought about it, he felt wretched. But that was too hard to say. “I still don’t know what I messed up, and what it cost. Can you tell me?”

  Commander Ironfist drew a deep breath. Seemed to reconsider. “Hand,” he said.

  Kip presented his right hand, not sure what the imposing commander wanted.

  Commander Ironfist looked at him flatly.

  “Oh!” Kip presented his left hand. The commander unwrapped the bandage. He said, “I was fourteen years old when I killed my first man. My mother was the deya of Aghbalu—a regional governor—and she was angling to depose Paria’s satrapah and become satrapah herself, though I didn’t know that then. I was walking past her chambers one day, and I heard her cry out. I had first drafted perhaps two weeks before. I went in, and I saw the assassin. Small man, features of the despised Gatu tribe, teeth stained from chewing khat, and poison on the wavy blade of his kris. I remember thinking that only if I drafted could I stop him in time. But the drafting didn’t just happen as it had two weeks before. He stabbed my mother, and while I stood there, not believing what I’d seen, he jumped out the window he’d climbed in and tried to escape over the roofs. I chased him, and I beat him with my fists, and I threw him off the roof.”

  Kip swallowed. Ironfist had chased an assassin, unarmed, across roof
tops, and killed a man armed with a poisoned blade—when he was fourteen?

  Ironfist paused, examining Kip’s burned hand. He gestured for the ointment the chirurgeons had given Kip and rubbed it on the raw skin. Kip hissed and clenched every muscle in his body to keep from crying out.

  “You need to stretch your fingers,” Ironfist said. “All day, every day. If you don’t, your fingers will tighten up into claws in no time. The scars will freeze your palm and fingers, and you’ll have to split your skin open just to move. Take a little pain now or a lot later.”

  This was a little pain?

  Commander Ironfist went back to his story as he wrapped Kip’s hand in fresh bandages. “The point isn’t that I’m a hard man, Kip. The point is I made mistakes. My mother was trained in dawat, our tribe’s martial art. Not highly proficient, but trained well for a civilian. If I hadn’t come in the room and she hadn’t been worried for me, she could have fended him off until her guards came. And once I chased him down, I shouldn’t have killed him. We could have found out who sent him.”

  “But you were just a boy,” Kip said. Having his hand wrapped back up and immobile was like crawling back into a warm bed on a cold morning.

  “And so are you,” Commander Ironfist said. Kip started to protest, but Commander Ironfist wasn’t finished. “Even if you weren’t, I’ve seen grown men and women make worse mistakes in battle. If we naturally made good decisions in battle, there’d be no need to train for it.”