The Broken Eye (86 page)

He stepped back and squinted again. “Damn,” he said. “It’s perfect.” He looked back down at his wrist, and rubbed it, but there was nothing there now.

“Kip, what is this?” Teia was suddenly afraid.

“It’s a gift of light. It’s the Night’s Embrace. The Shadow’s Wing. Portable Darkness. A crutch until you learn to walk. To mist walk? I don’t … it’s all scrambling together. It was all so clear.” He squeezed his eyes tightly shut. “And it’s not for me. Mist Walker. Damn. I should have gone for the gun.”

“Kip, I can’t take this. Why would you give me such a thing? This is—” She stopped.

They both looked at the cloak.

“Am I hallucinating again?” Kip asked.

The cloak had gone red. Red like passion, or a blush. And Teia knew it was red, too. That was no green. It didn’t feel green. Not in the least.

And now it shot through with blue, chased by orange, by pink, by a violet tinge. Each wave started at the neckline and coursed down to the hem. Now yellow. Curiosity?

“Oh,” Kip said.

“Oh?”

“It’s the cloak all the shimmercloaks were based on. Of course it’s the best.” He rubbed his eyes. “You can probably make it turn any color you— Oh no.”

He was staring at the cards scattered on the ground around them. He saw that he was standing on one of the cards and he moved carefully, lifting his foot as if the card might bite him. He bent down and grabbed the card as if it were made of rubies and gold, touching only the very edges. “Oh, Orholam, please. Please tell me I didn’t break any of … What the hell?”

He stared at the card as if it was offending him.

He grabbed another card.

“No!” he breathed. His eyes widened.

He grabbed more and more. Stared at each. What was he doing?

“No, no, no,” he said as he turned each over. “Teia, was this like this when you found me?”

“Was what like what?”

“Were the cards like this? No one came in and stole the real ones before you found me?”

“Kip, what are you talking about? They were all stuck to your skin. It was like they were poisoning you.”

“Oh, no no no no. I must have triggered one of her traps. No wonder it almost killed me. Out of all the times I’ve loused everything up…” He cupped his forehead with a hand, aghast.

“Kip! What are you talking about?”

He turned and held up a card in front of her. The back was illustrated painstakingly with geometric designs, lacquered with luxin. He turned the card. The face of it was blank. He showed her another card: blank. Another: blank.

“I’ve destroyed her life’s work! Janus Borig lived to make these cards, and she died protecting them, and now I’ve—” He took a few hurried steps away and retched noisily.

She came over and put a hand on his back. He was hunched over, hands on his thighs. She’d just saved his life, and this was not exactly how she’d expected him to react. Or at all how she’d expected him to react. Orholam, had she been thinking of kissing him?

“Is it really that bad?” she asked. No, T, he’s probably puking for fun.

“It may be worse,” he said, wiping his mouth. “My grandfather believed I knew where the cards were all along, and he’s threatened to kill me if I don’t turn them over. This? There’s no way he’ll believe this.”

“What, uh, what’s this other box?”

Kip sighed. “That’s my grandfather’s favorite deck. My father must have stolen them to spite him. They’re worth a fortune, of course. But one-of-a-kind, of course, so I can’t sell them, can’t hide them, can’t give them back without him knowing that I must have found these others.”

“Maybe this would make a good peace offering?”

Kip considered it, but then shook his head. “I don’t know why my father stole the cards. Maybe he has some purpose for them. When he comes back, I don’t want to have failed him doubly.”

“Kip,” Teia said gently, “you really think he’s coming back?”

“Yes!” he barked. “Yes,” he said more quietly. He winced and squinted. He seemed woozy, nauseated.

Teia went over and turned off all the lights except for the soothing blue.

“Thanks.”

“You’re still my partner, Kip. They haven’t taken that away. Not yet. Now, let’s clean this up.”

They began picking up the cards, and it was good.

Moments of companionable silence passed as they simply worked together. With the cards and the cloak and everything she didn’t understand of what was happening, Teia found herself saying, “I, I thought you were dead.”

Kip looked very tired. “I think … I think I was.”

“That would have been the worst thing that ever happened to me.” She’d wanted to say
losing you
would have been the worst thing that ever happened, but it was too much. Kip could say whatever popped into his head and get away with it, somehow. She couldn’t.

“I promise to die in some way that’s convenient and non-messy,” Kip said.

“That’s not what I’m—”

“I’m joking.”

“Oh.”

He took a deep breath. “Thank you, Teia. I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to find me destroying priceless artifacts.”

She laughed. Ripples of color went scintillating down her cloak. Whoa, what the hell?

“You know, I think I like that cloak on you,” Kip said. “Makes you a lot easier to read.”

She scowled, but the scowl wasn’t reflected in the cloak, so he could see she was faking, dammit. She shut her eyes and concentrated.

“Ooh, nice,” Kip said. “But I don’t think I can look at that cloak for long right now.” He was wincing and rubbing his temples.

She looked. The cloak was a drab, boring gray. It looked exactly like a normal Blackguard inductee’s cloak. “Kip, this is amazing!” It reacted directly to her will. She didn’t think the shimmercloaks changed their mundane form. Those only did one thing. This, this was something far more.

He grumbled something, but before she could ask him to repeat himself, Karris White Oak opened the door.

She didn’t look particularly pleased to see either of them. Nor was she pleased to see the mess of the punching bag down and sawdust spilled everywhere. She strode in purposefully, glanced at Teia, dismissed her.

“You did this, Kip?” she asked, meaning knocking the bag down.

He nodded, hands in his pockets. He also had a card box in each pocket.

“Show me your hands,” Karris demanded.

Kip pulled his hands out, carefully palm down, and Karris examined—his hands. Teia blew out a relieved breath. She glanced at her cloak. It was staying gray, like she wanted it to. Thank Orholam for that.

“Beat your own knuckles bloody, while training. Now your hands will be no good for days as you heal, and you’ll miss training. Does that strike you as particularly productive?” Karris asked.

“Learning to fight through pain is good training, yes,” Kip said. “And I won’t miss anything.”

Teia almost gasped at his tone, and Karris’s lips thinned. She was still holding Kip’s fist in her hand, and Teia wondered if she was thinking how fast she could turn her hold into an arm bar or a wrist lock and kick Kip’s defiant ass. Instead she turned his right arm over and looked at his elbow. Then she pushed up his sleeve and looked at his shoulder. She found the wound there.

“So you’ve discovered venting,” she said.

“Venting?” Kip asked.

“Shooting luxin is one way to make your punches or kicks faster.”

“Streaming? You already knew about that?” Kip asked.

“Why are you blinking? Do you have a hangover, Kip? Are you lightsick?”

“I’m fine,” he said.

She sighed. “We wait until after final vows to teach it. Your whole squad’s using this?”

Neither Teia nor Kip answered.

“Figures,” Karris said. “It’s a good way for people to burn through their halo in a couple years. And so difficult to use well that most Blackguards use it less than once a year.”

“A mistake,” Kip said. “Would you have us only shoot muskets once a year, because we use them so rarely in actual combat? The lack of practice reinforces—”

He saw the look on Karris’s face and finally shut up.

“So the bag tore off its hanger,” Karris said. “And it split open?”

Teia saw the problem. If the bag had torn off its leather hanger, that would have taken care of the force of a mighty punch. Or if it had ripped open at its loose thread, how would it then have torn off its hanger?

“I’m Guile,” Kip said, still hostile. It was, despite the incredible rudeness, kind of a brilliant response. ‘I’m Guile’ meaning that he was so far outside the norm that you could expect things far outside the norm to happen regularly around him, or ‘I’m Guile’ meaning I’m a cheater, and go to hell if you don’t like it?

Surprisingly enough, Karris didn’t slap Kip’s silly head off. And this was a woman who’d been famous for her temper. It seemed she was changing, mellowing with age. Of course, the open secret that the White had forbidden her to draft might have had a little to do with it, too. As a red/green, it might have been the best thing anyone could have done to her.

Karris’s face went still, her eyes hooded. “Don’t forget, Kip, I’m Guile now, too.”

Oh. So maybe not mellowing with age.

The chagrin on Kip’s face was priceless. Orholam’s bony knuckles, but Teia kind of wanted to give a cheer for her handler.

“Yes, ma’am,” Kip said.

Before Karris could say any more, though, the door creaked open once more. They all turned, but Teia was watching Karris, and she saw the woman’s face drain of color.

“Samite!” she said. “What are you doing down here?”

“The White said you might be here.”

“Sami, what happened to you?”

Teia saw the squat Blackguard give an apologetic grin. Her left hand was wrapped in a thick bandage that despite its thickness couldn’t hide that what was bandaged was smaller than a full hand.

“Retirement,” Samite said with forced cheeriness. “Or a post training the scrubs and the nunks here.” She lifted her chin at Kip and Teia.

Karris had already covered the distance to her friend. She lifted her friend’s arm carefully. Samite winced. “Samite. What happened?”

Samite shrugged. “The promachos has been sending out squads to search for all the bane.”

“Sure, sure,” Karris said.

“Mine went after the yellow. Found it and destroyed it. Not many wights there, but when yellows go wight, they figure out how to draft a solid yellow.
All
of them figure it out, it seems. Hell of a fight. Half the squad was new kids, and
I
was the only casualty. Embarrassing, frankly.”

Karris embraced her friend. Samite stood stoic for a moment, but then hugged Karris back.

“Guess this is what I get for that other thing. With Lady Guile. The last Lady Guile, I mean. Felia.”

“No, no, no, don’t talk like that.”

Teia was suddenly embarrassed at seeing this intimate expression between friends—and also intensely curious, though she could tell that this was a secret she wasn’t going to be learning.

Samite pushed back from Karris and looked at the heavy bag. “Kip, you do this?”

He nodded.

Samite continued, “Your father would be proud. He told me once to give you a hard time if you hadn’t knocked the bag open by Sun Day.”

Which did two things to Teia. First, she was deeply ashamed that she’d been part of the prank to keep that stitch reinforced and the thread loose. Second, it made her realize that Gavin had meant Kip to get those cards if he didn’t come back.

“But, I, uh, I’m not here about that, and I’m sorry to interrupt your training of these two, Lady Guile.” Samite took a deep breath. She glanced at Kip and Teia and shrugged. “It’s for your ears, but I guess they’ll know soon enough. Lady Guile, I wouldn’t have come to interrupt you for just … my … news. I came here to give you warning.”

“Warning?” Karris asked.

Teia was looking at Kip. He blanched. Teia had no idea what it was, but
Kip
obviously already knew what Samite was going to say.

“When we Blackguards landed on Big Jasper, there was another ship at the docks. A young lord was debarking. He was quite … willful, trying to make his way through the pilgrimage crowds. He said his name was Zymun.”

Kip looked ill again, but in a very different way.

Karris looked at her blankly. “And…?”

“Karris,” Samite said, “Zymun says he’s your son. The White wishes you to report to her, immediately.”

Chapter 77

Her son. Here.

Karris felt like she was watching her own body move from hall to hall to lift. She passed the Blackguard station and couldn’t even identify the men on duty. Her chest was constricted; it was hard to breathe. She could only focus on one thing at a time. Step, step, woman, dammit. Now knock. Her son.

Dear Orholam, it was all coming down.

Knock, damn you.

She lifted a hand and knocked on the White’s door.

The oddest thing happened with that simple, irrevocable action: she felt relief. It was all coming down, and somehow, no matter what that cost, no matter what came next, the lies were finished.

The Blackguards at the door, Gill and Gavin Greyling, looked at each other over her head. “Lady Guile?” Gill asked. He opened the door for her.

“Thank you.” She walked in, back straight, features clear. She had been taught by the best; she wasn’t going to disgrace them now. Here at the end of all things, she would be brave, and stoic, and take her punishment like a lady and a Blackguard.

The White was in her wheeled chair, and she looked stronger than she had in years. She saw Karris and said, “Leave us.” Her attendants and secretaries and Blackguards left immediately; there was a steel in her voice that brooked no argument or delay.

When the room was empty, she studied Karris.

Karris moved to speak, but the White lifted a finger, silencing her, and studied her more.

Then, abruptly, the White said, “Look at this invention. One of the young Blackguard inductees, Ben-hadad, made it for me. At first I didn’t think he quite realized what he’d stumbled upon, but now I’m pretty certain he does.”

She put her hand down on the arm of her chair, and the barest tendril of blue luxin moved down the rice-paper-thin skin of her arm—and the chair turned, and then rolled out from behind her desk as if a ghost had turned and pushed it.