It was not that these heroes hadn’t failed; it was that they had: all of them, sooner or later, in public or private. They were heroes despite their failures, for they had striven with their whole hearts toward the light. The Blackguard was strong because it didn’t feel threatened by those failures. This was a company that would live in the light.
And by some grace, Teia didn’t think how she would be a spy. She soaked up the light of the dawn, and the light of clear purpose and bedrock devotion. She only wished Kip and the rest of the squad could share this with her.
Gavin Greyling had stepped forward to be the seventh and final speaker.
“I remember Gavin Guile.”
“Gavin Guile was never a Blackguard,” Fisk snapped. “Great though he was. Is, High Lady. My apologies. Pick another, Greyling.”
“I beg to differ, Commander,” Gavin Greyling said. “Respectfully. Just before the Battle of Ru, when he sank the great ship Gargantua, Gavin Guile was given a Blackguard name by Commander Ironfist himself. Among us, Gavin is known as Promachos.”
“Neither you nor even Commander Ironfist had the authority to name a promachos,” Fisk said. “And though our esteemed emperor held that position, he surrendered it back to the Spectrum many years ago. You’re embarrassing—”
“Your pardon, sir, but it was not meant as a title, but instead as a Blackguard name that, in accordance with our best traditions, reflects the essence of the man. Earned hard and given true, it is not our way to strip a Blackguard—even an honorary one—of his name if he hasn’t forfeited the right to it by acting dishonorably. Are you suggesting Gavin Guile acted dishonorably?” Gavin Greyling was pushing it, but he did so with such glee it was hard to be mad at him.
“Watch your tongue, son.” Even for Commander Fisk, apparently.
“Yessir.”
Commander Fisk hesitated, looked around, and pursed his lips. “No one speaks of this. This circle is closed,” he barked. “Go.”
With no small amount of swagger, Gavin Greyling said, “I remember Gavin fucking Guile, who won the False Prism’s War, who outwitted the Thorn Conspirators and ended the Red Cliff Uprising. Gavin Guile, who brought low pirate kings and bandit lords, who ended the Blood Wars with his wits and one deadly wave of his hand, who brought justice to the Seven Satrapies. Gavin Guile, who hunted wights and criminals, who built Brightwater Wall in less than a week, who aborted the births of gods, destroyed at least two bane, and killed a god full fledged at Ruic Head. Gavin Guile, who faced a sea demon and lived, saving all the people of Garriston and the Blackguard, too. Gavin Guile, who sank Pash Vecchio’s great ship Gargantua with a rat. Gavin Guile, who armed us for war and gave the Blackguard the seas entire with our sea chariots and hull wreckers. Gavin Guile, heart of our heart, our Promachos, the one who goes before us in war, who came and conquered and will come again.”
The Blackguards couldn’t help it; they cheered.
They’d already been out looking for him on the skimmers, Teia’d heard. Sometimes on duty, sometimes off. And they would never give up. “For such a man, I would die twice,” Gavin Greyling said.
“Hear, hear!” a number of voices called out.
But Teia was looking at Karris. Her head was bowed, and Teia saw her swallow once, hard. But when Karris opened her eyes, her face was clear, with no hint of crying there. She nodded regally to the Blackguards.
“Thank you,” Karris said.
Commander Fisk said, brusquely, “We’ve all got duties awaiting us this day, nunks. We are a storied company, but we are also slaves, nunks, though some of us are slaves with ears unshorn. We serve a term, almost like indentured servants, but our term may be extended at will by our commander, and our eventual retirement may be requested, but granting that is the commander’s decision alone. Even if you save the money to buy out your papers, your commander need not accept them. We are honored slaves, but slaves. For warrior-drafters as we all are, there is no higher calling, no greater service, no possibility to rise higher than this shining company. But our lives are short and hard and lived at the direction of others.
“Teia, having taken vigil to reflect on your life and this calling, have you selected a patron to whose example you would aspire?”
“Yes,” Teia said. “I choose Commander Ironfist, who alone silenced the artillery at the Battle of Garriston, saving countless lives, who led this company with honor and bravery, and in the end was expelled for no good reason whatsoever. Ironfist reminds me that we join the Blackguard to serve, not for our own gain. He reminds me to be as vigilant of those who wield orders as those who wield swords.”
There was some quiet muttering in response to that. Teia thought it was in agreement—no one liked how Ironfist had been discarded and had then disappeared, though that was surely the only safe thing for him to do—but frankly, Teia didn’t care what they thought of her choice.
After a moment, Commander Fisk nodded, letting it go. “Well, then, if you would bind yourself and your honor to this lauded company, repeat after me.” And Teia followed him, echoing phrase for phrase: “I, Adrasteia Gallaea’s daughter.”
“I, Adrasteia Gallaea’s daughter.”
“Do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to High Lady Karris White and her successors, according to the law.”
“Do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to High Lady Karris White—” Terror, shambles! Teia forgot the words!
But Fisk prompted her gently, “And her successors, according to the law.”
“And her successors, according to the law.” Whew.
“I will protect the Prism with my life, and in the last extremity…”
“I will protect the Prism with my life, and in the last extremity…”
“I will protect the Seven Satrapies from him or his successors.”
“I will protect the Seven Satrapies from him or his successors.”
“So help me,” he hesitated to give proper reverence, “God.”
“So help me God.”
Then, as if Teia’s life hadn’t just changed forever, Commander Fisk continued on down the line.
Chapter 18
Buttoned tight, tall, rapier lean, and hawk eyed, Cruxer stood before the squad to give orders. He said, “I’m going to explain this to you in terms you can understand: shut up.”
The Mighty were gathered on the deck, greeting Ben-hadad with his flip-down spectacles and goofy Ferkudi, who’d just successfully tested Ben’s newest skimmer. They hadn’t all taken the news that Tisis would be joining them well. So now they paused, thinking Cruxer wanted them to shut up so that he could explain it. But he said no more.
“Oh. Come. On,” Winsen said.
“No,” Cruxer said. “You have your orders. You don’t like them. Fine. Don’t like ’em. And shut it. Since when did soldiers like the orders they got?”
“We’re not exactly just soldiers,” Big Leo pointed out. When he folded his arms like that, his biceps bulged out like sides of beef.
Cruxer said, “We are in this way: we get a task, we have to carry it out. Having to like it is nowhere in the description.”
“I’m not asking for blind obedience,” Kip said.
“He shouldn’t have to,” Cruxer said. “We’ve pledged our lives and honor to him. Stop acting like children and start acting like warriors. There’ve been lots of women in the Blackguard.”
“Every last woman in the Blackguard is a special case, and you know it,” Big Leo said, his voice low and large.
“Every last person in the Blackguard is a special case,” Cruxer said.
“None of that matters,” Winsen said. “We make our own rules. We aren’t Blackguards.”
It hurt all of them to be reminded. Only Ferkudi seemed unmoved. He said, “Well, I don’t want to make rules that get us killed.”
“I think us getting killed was pretty much assured as soon as we decided to go with Breaker,” Ben-hadad said. “No offense, Breaker.”
&n
bsp; “None taken,” Kip said. Because it’s wonderful that my closest friends assume I’m going to get them killed.
Somehow, none of them noticed Tisis approach. With her blonde hair tucked up under a floppy petasos, scruffy trousers and tunic, and a belt full of weapons slung low and loose on her hips, she nearly fit in with the ship’s crew. “You should take me,” she said. “There’s only six of you. I’ll be lucky number seven.”
“I’m not superstitious,” Big Leo grumbled.
“I am!” Ferkudi said. “Ever since this one time, I talked to this old witch lady, and she said, ‘Son—’”
“Ferkudi!” Cruxer said.
“No, she said ‘son,’ she didn’t know my name. It was already creepy enough that—”
“Ferk!” Cruxer said.
“Oh! Oh. Right.”
Tisis said, “There are things I can do that none of you big, terrifyingly strong men can do.”
“Like what?” Big Leo asked.
Ferkudi looked pleased to be called a big, terrifyingly strong man. He flexed his pectorals in a little dance. “She gets my vote.”
“Shut up, Ferk. Like what?” Big Leo asked.
“I can talk to strangers without scaring the hell out of them.”
“Funny,” Big Leo said. “But we’re trying to have a serious—”
“I was serious,” Tisis said. “I know you all look at Ferkudi and think of him as a big goof. Stop that, Ferkudi. Look at him. Right now.” They turned and looked at the big goof. “Ferkudi,” she said, exasperated, “finger out of your nose.”
He withdrew his finger and glowered.
“There! Like that.”
“O’s saggies,” Winsen said. “I get it.”
“Get what?” Cruxer asked, clearly irritated that he wasn’t understanding.
“Look at all of you,” Tisis said. “You’ve known each other for years now. Some of you since you were barely walking. Look what happened to you while you weren’t paying attention. You’re not six boys traipsing through a foreign satrapy, looking for adventure. What do you look like?”
Kip knew what she was talking about, but he was captured by another thought. These young warriors had been cutting her off, telling her how she couldn’t come with them, disrespecting her because of her beauty. Now they were listening to her quietly. She’d turned them already, and they hadn’t noticed it yet.
Except maybe Winsen. He seemed unaffected by her charm, grimly amused by the whole thing.
“You look fuckin’ scary,” Kip murmured.
It was true, and Kip saw it crash down on Cruxer most of all for some reason. Perhaps because he was the commander. Somehow he’d seen himself as a junior officer—a leader whose command would surely be taken from him, who would be shuffled back under the leadership of someone older. A leader of boys. He had always known he would have to start at the bottom when he went out into the real world.
But now here he was. He’d been proud that the Mighty were the best squad among the Blackguard trainees, but he hadn’t realized that now they were among the best in the world.
They would be feared, because they were fearsome. Big, grinning, chummy Ferkudi might have a permanent layer of softness around his big, round frame, but he could tear off a man’s arm with the power in those big, round shoulders. Add man-mountain Big Leo, quietly menacing Winsen, graceful Cruxer with his calcified shins, sinewy and double-spectacled Ben-hadad, and Kip, and not many people would block their way in a dark alley.
“I meant you, too, Kip,” Tisis said.
He snorted, and they looked at him as if he were crazy. “What?” he asked.
“They’re calling you the Splitter of Storms,” Tisis said.
“Storm Breaker, now, actually,” Ben-hadad said. “My suggestion.”
“Oh, hey, that’s clever!” Ferkudi said.
Ben-hadad said, “Sometimes praise from you doesn’t have the intended effect.”
But Kip wasn’t listening. It was always a game, right? These names were a propping up of a façade: if you’re not a real hero like an Ironfist but you have to accomplish what he would, you have to borrow as many of the trappings as possible. Ergo ‘Breaker.’ ‘Storm Breaker’ fit the mold, but that had been… a fluke. Irreproducible. Luck. If he even tried to draft paryl or chi again right now, he’d only hurt himself.
But Tisis was still staring at him, as if he were a half-wit for doubting himself.
Tisis was looking at him like that? Tisis? Who’d seen his embarrassing nudity? Who’d seen the shameful scars of a man who hadn’t been able to fend off small rodents?
‘A couple of the sailors tried to worship you,’ Cruxer had said.
It was as if all the faces around him were trying to tell him he was a different man than he knew he was.
Some men like the feel of wool over their eyes, I suppose.
That was a fine dismissal for the sailors, but his wife? His friends, who knew him far better than she did?
They had a blind spot for him, born of their love and forgiveness. Their kindly view of him was more a reflection of their characters than his.
“Right,” he said easily. “It’s beside the point. All of us, going into Blood Forest, all armed, all with the stained eyes of drafters, all with the dark skin of foreigners? We’ll look like invaders or brigands.”
Cruxer sighed, and Kip could feel frustration emanating from him. Cruxer was the best of them, and the blindest. Kip loved him for it.
“She’ll slow us down,” Big Leo protested, but he’d already lost.
“Any more than I will?” Ben-hadad asked, gesturing to his knee. “Or do you want to leave me behind, too?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Big Leo said.
But Kip was diverted by another problem now. Verity was walking across the deck, laden with baggage, taking up a place at the periphery of the conversation, head downcast, just a slave, invisible, thanks.
“Uh-uh,” Kip said. He grabbed his own bag from her and checked it briefly: soap, spare clothes, sundries, a pot, a plate, deck box, and coin sticks—with the correct number of coins on them. “You’re not coming.”
“I’ll be most useful, my lord. Cooking, cleaning, mending, things you’ve gotten used to having a slave around for. I can ease your life on the trail in a hundred ways.”
“I have no doubt of it,” Kip said. He looked dubiously at the other bags she was carrying. How many of those were for her, and how many for Tisis?
“Uh, Breaker, someone to cook for us?” Ferkudi said. “Have you ever tried to eat Cruxer’s squirrel stew?”
“I never was good at laundry,” Winsen said.
“Is this about my former… insouciance, my lord?” Verity asked. “Because I can promise—”
Kip held up a hand. “It’s not about that. Tisis is coming with us. Her sister is going to be furious, and I need someone whom Eirene Malargos trusts without reservation to tell her that this really was Tisis’s choice, and at her insistence. I need someone to tell her the truth, the whole truth.”
“Lady Malargos will be furious with me, my lord.”
“And for that, I’m sorry. I assume you’ve tried to steer Tisis otherwise?”
She scowled. It was a yes.
“So have I.”
She took a deep breath, then bowed her head, accepting.
When Kip turned back, Winsen and Ferkudi were looking at him. Ferkudi looked glum, like a child denied a cake. Winsen, though, looked peeved. Kip realized that when he’d held up his hand for Verity to stop speaking, they’d taken it as an order for them, too.
“Have to admit, I liked it better when you were just one of us,” Winsen said. “If I may be excused, my lord?” He sketched a mock bow.
“No, actually,” Kip said. “Before we go, we have to sort one more thing out. Not just for us, but for Eirene Malargos.”
“What’s that?” Winsen asked, lemon faced. He and the others glanced over at Verity, who was suddenly trying to look very nonthreatening.
>
“Just what the hell we plan to accomplish,” Kip said.
“I say we go fuck up the Color Prince,” Big Leo said.
“I don’t think we’re in the audience participation portion of the show,” Ben-hadad said.
“What?” Big Leo asked.
“Shut it, both of you,” Cruxer said.
Kip took a deep breath. “The strength of the Seven Satrapies has always been its trade. As much as our religion and politics bind us, we’ve partly been strong because of the trade winds and the trade circuit and the intermingling of blood and culture and goods that’s allowed us. Ilyta produces the best firearms even though they’re as far as possible from the best sources of gunpowder, in Ru. Parian iron is shipped everywhere. Ruthgari crops feed all the satrapies. That’s meant even a farmer in Abornea can afford to buy fresh Tyrean oranges on occasion. But there are downsides to this, too. No one in other satrapies tries to mine silver on the scale they do at Laurion in Atash. Everyone knows the best and most salt comes from the Ruthgar coast. The shipyards of the Great River Delta are fed almost exclusively with Blood Forest’s lumber. Point is—and I know I’m losing you, but give me a few more moments—point is, the Chromeria has been pretending this war isn’t serious from the beginning. At every step, it’s been worse than they realize, and much worse than they let on. The specialization that has been so helpful is going to be devastating as we lose the only places that make certain necessities for us making war. It wasn’t that much of an economic blow when the other satrapies lost Tyrean oranges and Tyrean hardwoods. But now we’ve lost the guano mines of Ru for gunpowder and all the silver of Laurion—silver the Color Prince’s Blood Robes can use to hire mercenaries and pirates.
“At the Battle of Ruic Head, we lost our navy. It’s being rebuilt, but that takes time and treasure, neither of which we have in excess. But if the pagans take Blood Forest, they take away cheap, plentiful lumber that’s close to our shipyards.
“That sets off a death spiral for us: If we can’t get lumber, we can’t build ships. If we can’t build ships, we can’t defend the shipyards. If they take the shipyards, they take the Cerulean Sea. If they take the Cerulean Sea, they won’t need to win a single battle against us. Big Jasper and Little Jasper are islands, and they’re nowhere near self-sustaining. A simple naval blockade would mean everyone there starves.”