The Blinding Knife (14 page)

Bewildered as he might be, sometimes a man’s highest calling is simply to stand, and hug.

In his dream, Kip was a green wight, chasing down screaming children and murdering them with blade and fire. He woke alternately furious, weepy, and bloodthirsty, the rage from those phantasms sometimes still clinging to him.

When he got up to go urinate in the middle of the night, a Blackguard accompanied him. It was a man Kip had never met, and he said nothing. Merely walked with Kip, and held him back for a moment while he checked that there were no assassins in the toilet. Ridiculous.

It was a relief to get out of bed in the morning, though Kip didn’t feel rested in the slightest. Several older, second-year students came and herded the new students toward the dining hall.

Kip was ravenous, but he got no more food than anyone else in the serving line. He reached the end of the line in dread. Tables were laid out in long rows, and students clumped together with friends.

Which I don’t have.

In fact, Kip had quite the opposite. He caught sight of Elio, whose arm was wrapped in thick bandages and hung in a sling. The boy was talking with his friends when he saw Kip. He shut up instantly and blanched.

I should go over there. I should go and sit with them, disarm them with small talk, pretend nothing happened, but assert my right to sit with the toughest boys in the class.

But he didn’t have it in him.

It was only then that he realized there was no Blackguard following him this morning. He looked around at the lines of students, tables, food, servants, and slaves. No Blackguards anywhere. For some reason, it took what little, tottering confidence he had and knocked it over with a breath. They’d seen what he’d done. They’d decided he wasn’t worth protecting.

Then Kip saw some kids he recognized: the boy with the strange spectacles who’d sat behind him in class yesterday and some others from the Blackguard training class. They were the outcasts—Kip could tell immediately. They were the awkward, the intelligent, the ugly, with those Blackguard hopefuls who were destined to fail out early and were merely trying to get in from some vain hope of their
own or their masters’. There was, of course, space at their table, and space around them, as if they were contagious. Kip went over.

“Can you read?” the boy asked as Kip came close. His flip-down spectacles currently had the blue lens down over one eye, and the yellow down over the other.

Kip hesitated. Did they not want him? “Um, yes?”

“You need to get to lecture if you can’t. If you can, you need to check the work schedule. Hold on, you had that—Oh, never mind, of course you can read. You told Magister Kadah to go stuff herself.”

“Really?” a homely girl asked.

Kip ignored her and tucked into his food.

“Why are you sitting with
us
?”

“You looked nicer than them,” Kip said, gesturing with a toss of his head toward the tough boys. “You want me to leave?”

They all looked at each other. Shrugged. “No,” the boy with spectacles said.

“So, what are your names?” Kip asked.

The bespectacled boy pointed to himself, “I’m Ben-hadad,” then to the homely girl, “Tiziri,” then to a gangly, gap-toothed boy, “that’s Aras, and—”

They were interrupted by a girl’s voice. “Hey, did you all hear about Elio getting his halos tapped by the new—” She cut off as she saw Kip.

“And… that would be Adrasteia. Classic, Teia.”

“We’ve met,” Kip said dryly.

Teia opened her mouth, then sat down silently, defeated.

“I didn’t hear,” Aras said. “What, new who? What happened?”

“
Aras
,” Teia said through gritted teeth.

“What? Was there a fight?” Aras asked.

“I don’t know if I’d call it a fight,” Kip said.

“You? You were in a fight? With Elio?” Aras said.

“You broke his arm in three places!” Adrasteia—Teia?—said.

“I did?” Kip asked.

“Wait, you broke Elio’s arm?” Ben-hadad asked. “I hate that kid.”

“Is that how you hurt your hand?” Tiziri asked. She had a birthmark over the left half of her face. She wore her kinky hair flopped over that way to try to hide it, but it was a futile attempt.

Kip looked at his bandaged hand. He was supposed to get a fresh poultice smeared on it every day. He’d forgotten this morning. He
didn’t even know if he could find the infirmary from here. “No, uh, this. I kind of got thrown into a fire.”

“Wait, wait, wait. You have to start from the beginning,” Ben-hadad said. “Aras! Stop staring over there or they’ll know we’re talking about—”

Aras, Teia, Tiziri, and Kip all glanced over at Elio’s table at the same time—and saw that Elio’s friends were all staring at them. Caught.

Ben-hadad scrubbed his chin where his beard was just coming in. “Hopeless,” he said. He flipped up both of the color lenses on the spectacles. He fixed his gaze on Kip, one eye looking slightly larger than the other. Kip had heard of the lenses that corrected bad vision before, but he’d never seen them. It was unnerving. “So,” Ben-hadad said to Kip, “spill.”

“About Elio? He came over and hit me a few times, and I punched him in the nose.”

They waited.

Kip spooned in more gruel.

“Worst. Storyteller. Ever,” Teia said.

“You punched him in the nose so hard his arm broke in three places?” Ben-hadad prompted.

“Look,” Kip said, “it wasn’t a big thing. I was really scared and I knew he was going to hit me, so I—you know? I hit him first. I kind of panicked.”

“And broke his arm?” Teia asked.

Kip shrugged. “He said he was going to kill me.”

Their looks were somewhere between dubious and totally impressed.

Kip decided to defuse it with humor. “I’ve only got one good hand. Now if he comes after me, we’ll be even.”

Not funny.

“Holy shit,” Aras said. “I saw you at the tryouts, but I had no idea you were that good.”

“You don’t look like a badass,” Ben-hadad said. “But I guess it proves you’re a Guile.”

“I heard after the fight was over, you broke his arm because he called you Lard Guile,” Tiziri said. She hadn’t been at Kip’s tryouts, obviously.

Teia sank into her seat.

“It wasn’t like that,” Kip said. “Really. It was just really fast, and
then it was over in like three seconds. I got lucky. Seriously. Ask Teia. She’s tougher than I am. She kicked me in the face yesterday.”

“What? What? What?” Ben-hadad said. “Teia?”

“Kip was assigned to be my partner,” Teia said. She grimaced.

Oh, thanks.

Ben-hadad asked her, “Partner? You tried out? I thought you weren’t going to try out until next year.” He looked momentarily hurt, but then covered it. “I would have come! Ha, scrub!”

Kip’s lifted eyebrows asked the question for him.

Aras said, “Ben-hadad got here too late for the drafting lectures year last spring, but he did test into the spring class of the Blackguard.” He turned to Teia. “But you said you thought the Blackguard was stupid. Standing in the path of swords to protect idiots is
for
idiots, you said.”

“Aras, you’re sitting next to Kip
Guile
,” Tiziri said.

“I know. I heard the first time. What’s the—Oh, oh! I’m sure Teia didn’t mean your father’s an idiot, Kip. She probably meant the White. I mean, I guess it’s gotta be one or the other of them, huh? Maybe the Red? Oh, wait, that’s your grandfather.”

“
Aras!
” Teia said.

Ben-hadad said, “Teia, you said you didn’t want to hurt people for a living.” He seemed to take Teia’s secrecy about trying out as a personal betrayal.

“I don’t!” Teia said, defensive.

“Then, what? When I argue for you joining the Blackguard, what they do is garbage and idiocy, but Kip comes along and—”

“That has nothing to do with anything! Not all of us are bichromes, Ben. You might even be a poly. You can go wherever you want, do whatever you want. You’re going to be powerful enough that no one will care who your parents are. I don’t even have a real color.”

“Your color is just as real as anyone’s. People just don’t recognize it yet, Teia, we’ve talked—”

Teia shot back, “If no one recognizes it, no one’s going to recruit me for it either. Maybe in five years more people will think like you do, but for now I’ve got no other options. It’s all I’m good for. Don’t you understand? I tried to find another sponsor. I failed, and my mistress ordered me to try out for the Blackguard.”

“I didn’t know your mistress ordered it. I’m sorry,” Ben-hadad said.

She’ll make it in, Kip thought, but he said nothing. He was the one who’d unwittingly revealed the secret. He was just hoping that by being quiet he might avoid further wrath.

“And you,
partner
, thanks a lot,” Teia said.

Kip finished his breakfast, still feeling hungry. Teia got up and went over to the lists on the wall. She left her bowl and spoon and glass on the table, as it seemed that most everyone did.

Ben-hadad and Tiziri got up and left, too, heading in different directions. Only Kip and Aras were still sitting at the table. The gangly boy was a slow eater. The apple of his throat was distractingly large, making him look like a large, kind vulture.

“Are we supposed to do anything with our bowls?” Kip asked.

“Huh?” Aras had been looking over at some girls. Pretty, in the same plain uniforms as everyone else, but with jewelry at their wrists and throats. Rich girls. Out of reach, but not out of the reach of dreams, from Aras’s distant look. “Bowls? What?”

“Are we supposed to put away our bowls?” Kip asked. Back home, no one would tolerate a fifteen-year-old shirking washing up.

“Slaves do it. You should go. First shift starts soon.” Aras went back to staring at the girls.

Leaving the table felt like abandoning safety to go back and play in the fields of the wolves. But there was no putting it off. Kip stood and headed toward the wall of lists. He passed by some older discipulae just coming to eat. A boy and a girl walked by, their arms down at their sides, eyes intent with concentration, their food held on blue trays that they each were drafting. Each raised their hands slowly as they walked, trying to adjust the open luxin without spilling their food and drink. Then they sealed their trays, almost simultaneously.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no,” the boy was repeating. He’d sealed the luxin badly, and even as he reached the table, his tray disintegrated, dropping his bowl and glass, both of which shattered.

“One for the girls!” his opponent said, setting down her perfect tray easily.

The boy swore under his breath as some other boys, clearly his friends, groaned. A magister piped up, “You’re cleaning that yourself, Gerrad. No slaves.”

Teia intercepted Kip before he got to the lists. “We’ve got mirror duty, blue tower.”

“What?” Kip asked.

“You weren’t here for bearings week when they show us how things work. You don’t know anything,” Teia said. “So I switched chores with someone. I’ll be on your crew all week.”

“Really?” Kip said. It was a ray of normal piercing his black clouds of utter cluelessness.

He was about to thank her when she said, “No. Don’t.”

“I was going to—”

“I’m not doing it for you. Partners often have to share each other’s punishments. The punishments usually mean you miss class. So if you botch things, it hurts my chances to make it into the Blackguard.”

Great, something else to feel guilty about.

Teia walked him to one of the lifts, where they joined about fifty other students waiting. Teia’s hair wasn’t tied back today and now Kip felt foolish for mistaking her for a boy in the first place. Moron.

He wondered what Liv was doing now. He wondered if she was even still alive. Stupid worry. She was probably murdering people by now. Kip had stood there, on the eve of the Battle of Garriston. He’d heard all of the Color Prince’s lies and known them for what they were: smears and half-truths. High-minded talk used to cloak cowardice.

Magic was hard. It made you a master of the world for a decade or two, and then it mastered you. Drafters went crazy. When vastly powerful people go crazy, they endanger everyone. Killing them wasn’t nice, but it was necessary.

The Color Prince said, “We won’t murder our parents who have served for years!” He meant, “I don’t want to die when it’s my turn. I want all the privileges we’re afforded because of our gifts, but I don’t want to pay the price.” Kip could see that, and Kip was a moron. Why hadn’t Liv?

After a few minutes, Kip and Teia were able to get on the lift with twenty other students.

“We’re lucky,” Teia said. “The mirrors are boring, but when you have to spend all morning on the counterweights and then you go to Blackguard tryouts and you can barely lift your arms? That’s awful.”

“Thanks, tell me about it,” another student said. Kip thought he recognized the boy from the Blackguard class. His name was Ferkudi, maybe? “I’ve got the counterweights all week!”