Oops.
He shook off the sawdust and, with trembling hands, opened the box. The new cards were there. All the precious cards—a treasure beyond imagining, the hidden truths of kings and satraps and Colors and many of the greatest women and men alive today and in the last two hundred years. They were all here.
Gavin must have known that with how often he was gone, his things would be searched. So he’d hidden it here, where it would only be found by either Kip or Ironfist. Which of course brought up the obvious problem. Where could he hide such a treasure, when he’d shown how terrible he was at hiding anything and Andross Guile had shown how ready he was to violate Kip’s privacy. Or should he turn over the cards, take Andross’s deal? Turning over the cards would mean Kip had given up on his father.
But that could wait.
A chill passed over his sweat-damp forearms, tingled down the length of his spine and up into his scalp. Kip stood, disrupting the heavy bag. More sawdust poured out onto the floor. He was going to pay for that mess. But it wasn’t just sawdust. There was another card box—one Kip had seen before, briefly. Andross Guile’s own card box: the one he’d asked if Kip had stolen. Gavin had stolen it.
And now Kip had it.
But that could wait, too. He had the cards. Janus Borig’s life’s work. Her masterpieces. Wonders of the world. Kip had scanned these cards once, when he hadn’t known anything. He was giddy, trembling. He opened the broken box and lifted the entire deck out.
A shot of joy, as intense and burning as straight brandy, went through him.
Odd. It didn’t quite feel like his joy. Kip looked around the room at the seven intense colored lights illuminating the room. How many of those was he passively drafting? Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to be drafting and holding—
The deck in his hand was vibrating. It wasn’t his hand trembling, it was the cards themselves, reacting to something.
Kip flipped the whole deck away from himself, but they escaped from his grasp as he flicked his wrist and jumped toward him like iron filings to a magnet, slapping to bare skin. The rest of the deck hit him in his bare chest, snap-snap-snap, drawn inexorably to his skin. Seven colors—more—roared through Kip, seemed to explode beyond the boundaries of his body. Everything was burning and freezing and piercing.
He was staggering around in a circle, blind, the snap-snap-snap of cards smacking onto the bare skin of his back. He tore at the cards across his chest, and they went tap-tap-tap-tap-tap, resonance points jumping to his fingers. As each card scraped off his hand, another jumped onto his fingers, and another. Too fast, too sticky, and then they weren’t just burning into his fingers. Every card seemed to bore into his skin at many points. He was screaming.
A luminescence bloomed in the room in front of him. A figure filled with glory like light, arresting, impossible to look away from. Rea Siluz, the librarian with the halo of brown hair and the full lips, the woman who’d sent Kip to Janus Borig in the first place. Except now he didn’t think ‘woman’ was the right term for her.
He was falling—
No, he was jumping—no, he was fighting, blazing swords in each hand—no, he was cursing the woman he’d given his satrapy for—no, he was hearing a young Blackguard say, “It’s not incarnitive, sir.”
“It’s real damn close.”
Finer gave a jaunty salute, and leapt off the precipice. The magnificent bastard, he did a somersault on the way—
Kip hit the floor, the impact jarring him back to himself. Rea knelt beside him. “Breaker, I can’t help you in this. Get out or you’ll die.”
The light was scouring flesh from bone, was whittling bone to slivers, was grinding slivers into shavings, grinding shavings into dust.
A wind made of light itself, Orholam’s breath, streamed across what once was Kip and scattered him. Scattered to every corner of the Seven Satrapies, beyond. Scattered him from the present and into the past. Blew him out of time, as Orholam was out of time.
She was becoming a wight, as all the luxiats had warned about for her whole life. She’d broken the halo. She should commit suicide. It was the only option. Else what might she do? The Color Prince was betting she would join him, that she would lose her mind in exactly the way he wanted her to. She bit a tiny hole in her tent, letting through one tiny ray of light. If she used the tiny sapphire her Purple Bear Usef had given her, she should—
Zee Oakenshield blinks to clear her eyes. There are enemy armies on both sides of the Great River. She feels a pang at the sight. It isn’t fear. Regret. Should have tried harder. Shouldn’t have spit those witticisms in Darien Guile’s face. The flush of pleasure at besting one of the smartest men in the world, the laughter of the nobles that day, will be paid for in the blood of common men today—
Her pen scratches precise lines: “Dog. Day 1207. Still no differences in physiology beyond what this researcher originally drafted. No changes in psychology detected, though previous caveats about the limits of studying dogs’ minds stand. Day by day, this researcher’s conviction grows that incarnitive drafting can be done safely—if proper protocols are strictly observed. There is a slippery slope here, but the Chromeria is overly cautious. Luxin properly sealed before implantation is no different, and indeed, much safer! than mundane tools. If—”
He staggers from the burning White Oak manor on Big Jasper, flames licking the sky. His skin is sloughing off. He’s screaming even as the healers come running—
Kip gasps. He retches, but the visions won’t let go. There’s so much power flowing through him, he can’t even see. He screams on a raw throat—or tries. It freezes in his throat, fails.
“Kip, Breaker, listen: your heart has stopped. You haven’t much time. Don’t be stalled or distracted by—”
His eyes don’t close, can’t close, but the images flicker as if he’s blinking.
Gavin opens his eyes to the same yellow hell that has greeted—
Ceres is being a bitch, Gunner thinks to hisself—
She must be the last Blackguard alive—
Orholam, black luxin. Black! It—
The light kills—
She—
Chapter 74
“Strange boy,” Murder Sharp said, a few seconds after Kip left his room. Murder Sharp had dropped his invisibility. He unlaced the front of his mask, as if it made him claustrophobic.
Teia said, “Say one more word about my friend. I dare you.”
Master Sharp’s face twisted like he’d drunk vinegar where he expected wine. “There is a time and place to discipline one’s apprentice. This, sadly, is not it. This”—he waved his hand about—“this is weakness, Adrasteia, and you’re best off without it.”
She tried to mentally make a box and drop every emotion into it. Anything she revealed would be made a weapon against her.
“You can’t protect him. You know that, don’t you?” Master Sharp said. “Not from me. Especially not from me. I wonder, what would you do, if I told you that to prove yourself, you’d have to kill him?”
“Why don’t you order it, and find out?” Teia asked.
“Oooh, iron in you. I like.” He smiled that odd, predatory smile where he seemed to be trying to show all of his perfect teeth at once. “You have something for me?”
Teia threw him the cloak, and handed him the climbing crescents, too.
“Dropped one crescent,” she said. “Had to get out of the White’s apartments fast. Blackguard almost caught me on the balcony.”
“But didn’t.” It was a question.
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
He searched her then. It was a dispassionate violation, like being stripped naked by a man who preferred boys. It made it better, but not by much. He started with her scalp, jamming fingers through her hair roughly. If she’d spent any time on her hair, she’d be furious, but Archers were too practical for elaborate hairstyles on any but feast days.
“Can’t you do this with paryl?” Teia asked.
“Not foolproof, as
I’m sure you know.”
She did? Actually, she didn’t. Holy—
Murder Sharp had just jabbed two fingers hard into her groin. In the front side, and the back side. She was so surprised, so violated, that she didn’t even do anything. And then it was over.
“When I was in Ha—” Murder Sharp stopped. “When I was in prison, you’d be amazed what people would put… where. Puffing haze that smells like… midden? Could never make myself so desperate. Not even to fit in. This one Tyrean hid knives up… well. They searched him rough, cut him all up inside. He didn’t live, but for the longest time, he was the… butt of our jokes.”
Hilarious.
He released her and unrolled the cloak, far enough to check the fox sigil. “Just the one? Gebalyn’s burnt cloak?”
“It was the only one there.”
“Was it?”
“Yes. But I have to wonder why you’d send me on such a job. Was it to see how dumb I was? If I’d found both cloaks, would you have expected me to bring them to you? Why would I possibly make myself less valuable to you, you who so casually kill?”
A brief troubled look crossed Murder Sharp’s face. He really hadn’t thought it through. The question was, had whoever had given the orders?
“Was this a test to see how smart I am?” she asked.
A frown on that perpetually grinning face. “Perhaps it was. Regardless, well done. You brought us a shimmercloak, and that’s better service than many in the Order of the Broken Eye have done in a century. Even if it was handed to you.”
For one moment, Teia’s heart stopped. He knew the White had helped!
Then she realized Master Sharp meant that he had helped her so much that the job was simple.
“It was windy out there,” Teia said, just to say something.
“Never liked heights much myself. But then, that’s why they pay us, isn’t it?” He folded the purloined cloak up with rapid motions.
“You’re going to pay me?” Teia asked.
“Of course not, how would you explain where you’d gotten the money? But I do get paid on your behalf, and for that, thank you. Two cloaks would have been better.” He looked at the cloak again. “I would let you keep this if I could,” he said. “I suspect it’s gonna get bloody here. Try not to get killed.”
With that, he flipped up the hood of his own cloak, laced it back up over his face with quick, practiced motions, and stepped out of the room.
Which left her alone with her thoughts. Which circled Kip.
She expelled a great breath. Dammit, Kip. Just. Dammit.
You had to do that in front of Murder Sharp? When I couldn’t respond?
And how would I have responded, had he not been here?
The exact same way, probably.
What was it about Kip that petrified her? When they trained, he was her partner, and it was easy. Everything flowed smoothly and easily, like they were left and right hands, working together. He trusted her so implicitly that she trusted herself more when he was around. He made her feel better about herself.
What was scary about that?
And how could this be a surprise? When he’d given her that hug that wasn’t just a hug, the alarm bells should have been ringing. She should have acted then. If she simply wanted to be his partner, or his friend, she should have said something afterward. Something clear, without being unduly embarrassing. Stringing it out was a cruelty of kindness. A friend didn’t do that.
No, she’d wanted to bask in that little extra attention, but she’d wanted to freeze it there. She wanted no expectations of her, only his adoration.
That sounds like a great relationship. For me.
Why then did she feel that virulent rage shoot through her at the very thought of Tisis Malargos?
Seems like a bit of an overreaction, huh?
She knew where he’d be now. He’d be trying to knock the sawdust out of that heavy bag. Boys, so uncomplicated.
One of these days, she was going to have to tell him that Ben-hadad had secretly been repairing that one stitch since he’d noticed Kip trying to knock it open. Ben-hadad’s father had been a tailor, and Ben-hadad had left that one stitch hanging loose on purpose, while tripling the bag’s strength at that seam.
The prank gave all the squad a little smirk every time they saw Kip mercilessly pounding that bag.
Funny to frustrate the Guile who’d had everything in life handed to him.
Suddenly, that prank seemed impossibly petty and cruel.
No, now was probably not the time to tell him about the seam.
She looked at the door. She should go now, before Kip did something stupid.
Why do I have to be the adult?
You think you are being the adult, between you and Kip?
Orholam damn it, I nearly fell off the side of the Prism’s Tower half an hour ago. I am not going to be afraid of talking to a boy.
She grabbed the door handle. Dropped it.
Fine, I’ll be afraid. It’s a different kind of fear altogether. But I’m not stopping.
She huffed. It felt empowering. Stupid boy.
She threw the door open and, glowering storms at everyone who crossed her path, made her way to the lift. It stopped down a few floors. Payam Navid, one of the most handsome young men in the Chromeria if not the entire world, stepped on. He looked at the sour look on her face. He was so beautiful it was probably the first time in his life he’d seen a woman frown at him. Probably wasn’t even aware that women could frown. Bastard. It wasn’t fair that someone could be so attractive.
He said, “I don’t—”
“Don’t talk to me.”
“I only—”
“Don’t.”
“Come now,” he said, smiling, showing perfect teeth to go with his tall, dark, and gorgeous.
Teia sniffed and waved a hand at his face. “All this pretty you’ve got going on here? One more word, and you lose it.”
For a moment, he seemed amused. She didn’t even come up to his shoulder. She must seem like a puppy barking at him. But then his eyes lit on the embroidery of her Blackguard rank on shoulder, stitched gray on gray. A wash of expressions poured through his perfect face, and then he looked away, intimidated.
He got off at the next floor. Once he was out of harm’s way, he turned and said, “What’s your name, anyway?”
She rolled her eyes, and put her hand to the lever.
He blurted, “Would you like to go to the—”
But she was already gone.
The little draught of confidence she got from that gave her enough strength to step off the lift in the basement. But then she stopped.
Oh, come on, T. Don’t be ridiculous!
One at a time, she lifted her feet and walked to the door of their exercise room. And again, she paused in front of the door. Move!
She threw the door open. It slammed back against the wall, far harder than she’d intended. She stepped into the room, apologetic—not at all the attitude she’d intended.
But then she saw Kip. He was lying on the floor, unmoving, unconscious.
What had he done?!
She ran to him. There was a halo of cards—Nine Kings cards?—around Kip. The heavy bag lay on the floor nearby, torn open, sawdust scattered. Kip’s eyes were open, unseeing. He wasn’t breathing.
No no no!
He was bare-chested, his skin cold, clammy. She rolled him onto his back, and for a moment, she had hope.
In his open eyes, colors were swirling: in Kip, every color of luxin was alive.
But Kip wasn’t.
There was no reaction in those eyes, just a palette of colors swirling down an eternal drain, disappearing, disappearing.
“Kip! Wake up! Kip, come back! Breaker!”
She shook him, but there was no response.
The cards were stuck to him like leeches, holding on. She began tearing them off his skin. They were poison. They were killing him. As each popped off, she saw a swirl of colors fade into his skin
like dribbles of ink dropped into a glass of water. What was going on?
Tearing the last one off, she held her breath. But Kip didn’t stir. If anything, the colors rising and falling like billowing clouds in his eyes began to recede.
She had taken his hand in hers. She squeezed it hard. “No, Kip, no.”
But he was dead.
Chapter 75
Being dead wasn’t what Kip expected. He was still himself, so he wasn’t in a card, of that much he was certain. He’d triggered a trap Janus Borig had left on the cards, then. She’d certainly loved her lethal-and-easily-tripped-by-her-friends traps.
It was dark in here. Dark as a tomb—dark as if his eyes were closed. Which they were. Little Kipling, not the brightest color in the spectrum. He was lying facing down on a polished hardwood floor. He stood up—that was good. Good that he could move, right?—and found that he was in a library.
No, maybe not a library, more like the Library. Shelves of a curious, luminous red wood marched in lines to the horizon. Leagues of shelves, each five or six times the height of a man. Kip’s eyes traced the lines of a nearby shelf loaded with the new pressed books up, and up. There were ladders on rollers to reach the higher shelves, but there was no ceiling. The night sky itself gleamed high above, undistorted, stars unwinking, clearer than Kip had ever seen them.
Kip was no astrologer, but he didn’t see a single constellation that he recognized. A sudden sense of vertigo swept him, as if he were going to go flying off the ground and out into that void. He slammed his eyes down to the shelves again.
Atasifusta. That was the wood. The wood that burned forever. Except here, it was merely burnished to such a high sheen that it provided warm ambient light for the whole library. Neat trick. Kip took a step forward and looked down an aisle to see how wide it was.
There was no end.
He stepped back to his spot, as if to find safety.
He took a deep breath. Wait, was that the first breath he’d taken since he’d been here? Did he have to breathe, being dead and all? Oh, he was breathing. Odd that he wasn’t scared. Confused, certainly. Curious, of course. But not a crumb of cowardice.