by Brent Weeks
A scent in the air arrested Karris, and she couldn’t help but stop at a little storefront she hadn’t been to in years. They kept slowly simmering pots of kopi, and at this time of morning it was fresh and beautiful. Especially when you’d been up most of the night.
“Ah, my favorite Blackguard!” Jalal said. He was a round little butterball of Parian. Karris thought he’d had more teeth the last time she’d been here. “Watch Captain…” He snapped his fingers.
“White Oak,” she said, grinning.
“Ah, yes! But I find redemption here!” He grabbed a cheap clay cup and a fresh wedge of onion and ladled hot kopi into it. He poured out some of the steaming hot liquid into a clean saucer, swirled it, put it back into the cup, and repeated the saucering until the kopi was the perfect temperature. Then he fished out the onion wedge and spooned in half a spoonful of Ilytian sugar.
“Brilliant,” Karris said. “You remembered.”
“A kopi man never forgets.” He tapped his forehead with his index finger thrice, thinking. “Ah, ah!” Then he produced the kind of small sweet roll that Karris liked. “Yes?”
She smiled. “You’re a wonder.” It was perfect. Exactly as she’d had years ago, and the kopi was wonderful.
She paid, feeling enlivened by the stimulant and the food, and headed toward Ebon’s Hill. There was an estate there that had a gorgeous view of the bay and the rising sun. Dazen had shown it to her when they were first courting.
He hadn’t knocked on the door or anything so civil. Instead, he’d shown her how to climb up onto the fence, and from there onto the bulbous dome roof of a neighbor’s house. It was quiet, peaceful, and for a young teenage girl, it had felt naughty.
They’d kissed there for the very first time, after holding hands all night, talking.
How was she going to broach the topic, though? “Gavin, you big idiot, I’ve known you’re Dazen for months”? No. She’d merely sit down next to him, watch the sun rise, and then say, “I remember our first kiss here.”
The thought of throwing Gavin so far off kilter was more than a little pleasing.
Truth was, they were going to have to do a lot of work. A lot of the lies he’d told her made sense to her now, but not all of them, and knowing why someone had lied to you was different than understanding it, different by far than forgiving it.
But still, she was eager to start living. Scary as it was. Besides, he’d said he loved her, hadn’t he? It wasn’t like she was going out on a limb.
She rounded the last corner and found herself on her ass, sitting on the ground. It took her a moment to realize she’d been hit in the face. And then a gang of men gathered around her, hitting, hitting, hitting.
She kicked, she swung, she screamed, but her training did little for her. There were a dozen men, all big, and they’d sealed off any form of escape. Her speed was no use to her on the ground. Her weapons expertise no good with her weapons torn away.
Her rage was undercut by humiliation, fear. She was a Blackguard. How could she let herself be taken off guard? How could she be so terrified? She tried to punch, tried to kick, but each of her limbs was trapped. She thrashed. A foot caught her in the kidney. Black stars exploded in white skies. She wasn’t supposed to be afraid; men were supposed to fear her. A face leaned close, saying something, and she whipped her head forward, shattering his nose, making his blood explode all over her. She twisted an arm, shattered a man’s elbow. Then her head rebounded off the paving stones from a blow she never even saw. And then all emotions faded as she lost her grip on consciousness-and still the beating continued, continued, continued.
Chapter 90
“Blackguards die. Death is our companion,” Commander Ironfist said, addressing the scrubs in one of their little training buildings. “Yesterday, one of our own was killed. Lucia.”
The remaining twenty scrubs had been given the night off after Lucia’s death, but they had been told to be here in formation, first thing in the morning, or be kicked out. All had come.
“Lucia had little chance of making it into our company.” The commander paused, letting that sink in. “That’s right. In the harsh light of death, other people lie. Other people lie because they fear death, and fear that when they die, others will speak the truth about them. Our challenge is to live in such a way that the truth is no embarrassment. Lucia wasn’t a great fighter, but she was brave and she was honorable and she didn’t deserve to be murdered by some coward with a musket. We’ll find him. We’re out looking for him now. And when we find him, we’ll kill him. In the meantime, we have work to do. We’re the Blackguard. We always have work to do. Trainer?”
Trainer Fisk came before the class, but Kip looked over to Cruxer. The boy’s face was like iron.
“War will be your teacher,” Trainer Fisk said. “We’re going to war. As some of you may know, the Spectrum has decided to send us to defend Ru. We’ve seen it coming. Now it’s here. We’d planned to have two more weeks of training before we selected the trainees out of your class. Especially after Lucia was killed. But Blackguards don’t stand still. Better we don’t, anyway. The final round of testing is today. I know that some of you might be beat up from fighting yesterday. Sorry. Tough. Your class is down to twenty. Fourteen will become Blackguard trainees.” He paused.
“Those of you who get cut, you can try again next season. And I hope you will. Despite that we’re taking twice as many initiates as we usually do, this has been an unexpectedly fine class. Your odds to pass next time are very good. You’ll be seeded at the top of that class, above the legacies.” He scowled. “Now, all of you, to the grounds, double-time!”
When they arrived, jogging smartly in line, Kip saw that there were perhaps two thousand spectators ready to watch them. Of those, maybe only a third were full Blackguards or Blackguard trainees in the years ahead of Kip’s class. Kip realized that he wasn’t winded from the jog. He was a long way from the physical condition the best students were in, but he was getting stronger. Slowly.
He was also glad that Teia had told him today would probably be the final test. Kip had been able to hide the dagger in the Prism’s training room, so he didn’t have to wear it on his ankle. And no one could get in there.
As always, they took their places, and Trainer Fisk stood before them to give them the rules. “You pick your colors. No spectacles. No weapons. As before, you can challenge three places above you. You win their token, you can challenge again. Those at the bottom get to challenge first. Mercy or unconsciousness, as judged by me. We know you want to win, and that everything is riding on these fights for some of you, but anyone who maims an opponent during testing will be kicked out. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” the scrubs said in unison. There was a current in the air, like before a lightning storm. This test separated scrubs from Blackguards. Even if they washed out or got injured before final vows, if they made it through today, they would forever have that rare badge of honor: Blackguard. Those who were slaves who made it through today’s test would have their contracts put in escrow by the Chromeria itself. Nothing would be allowed to interfere with their training until they washed out or stood to take their final vows and had their price paid by the Chromeria itself. The price they commanded would make their masters wealthy, but the sale itself wasn’t voluntary. They would be instantly in a different class. They would, of course, still owe their obedience to the Blackguard, and would serve until retirement. But even a Blackguard slave was a Blackguard. Internally, there was no difference in duties or in privileges: a woman from a hundred generations of nobles like Karris White Oak served on exactly the same schedule as Pan Harl, whose ancestors had been slaves for eight of the last ten generations.
Today was everything.
As Kip and the others walked toward the ring they were each handed a token.
Trainer Fisk said, “If you make it into the Blackguard, you will keep the token you win this week. Whichever token you have at final vows, you will keep with you for life.�
� Trainer Fisk pulled out a necklace he wore and showed them an old gold token with a four inscribed on it. “Those with the highest numbers will be your lieutenants, initially. Now get in line.”
Kip got in line, an older trainee checking each name against the order list, and giving the top fourteen fighters gold tokens, those below that bronze. On the front of each coin was a number in Parian script with a verse of some ancient text Kip couldn’t read. On the obverse was a fighter, each coin bearing a different etching. But Kip’s coin was bronze, with an etching of a woman with a spinning staff on it and a Parian eighteen on the back.
Raising his voice, Kip said, “Sir, I’m fifteenth place, not eighteenth.”
The entire circle got quiet. Not only the scrubs, but all the other Blackguards and Blackguard trainees. You didn’t contradict a trainer. And indeed, Trainer Fisk’s face darkened.
“You didn’t check the list? Your cadre didn’t finish yesterday. All of you are bumped down three spots.”
“That’s bullshit!” Kip said. He clapped a hand over his mouth. Blackguards guard their tongues.
“You just lost a color for that, son,” Trainer Fisk said. “If you have anything else to say, you’ll forfeit. You want to do that?”
Kip swallowed. Shook his head.
“You’re counting our fight yesterday as a loss?” This time, the voice was Cruxer’s. He came forward. “Did you see how Breaker fought? We made it through everything because of him. We won. There were only good neighborhoods left between where we were and where that bastard murdered Lucia. I’m sorry, sir, but Breaker’s right. That is bullshit. You’re making it nearly impossible-”
“Cruxer! You’re still a scrub, and if you don’t remember your place, so help me, I will bounce your ass out of here right this second,” Trainer Fisk said. “The mission was to bring the money back to the Chromeria. You didn’t do it. No excuses. You failed.”
Kip had never seen Cruxer angry, much less furious, but the boy was now. For a second, Kip thought Cruxer was going to punch Trainer Fisk. A tremor flew through the crowd like a plucked chord on a psantria. Every Blackguard here had been trained to anticipate violence, and every one of them saw the same thing. But Kip stepped forward and put a hand on Cruxer’s arm. “Orholam won’t let injustice long stand, right?” Kip said.
Cruxer was religious. Kip thought using a luxiat’s platitudes might redirect his classmate.
“A fact we all would do well to remember,” Cruxer said. His tone was level, but his eyes didn’t leave Trainer Fisk’s. Then Cruxer turned.
“So, who’s first?” Kip asked quickly. Oil on the waters, Kip, oil smoothing troubled waters.
Trainer Fisk glowered at him, then barked, “Winsen! You’re up! Who do you challenge?”
Winsen was twentieth among the scrubs. Mountain Parian, but without their usual tall, thin build. He had a fair amount of baby fat and was one of the younger scrubs. He was an odd one-sometimes brilliant, sometimes terribly stupid. Teia thought that next year he’d be formidable. This year, though, his odds of making it were terrible. Not someone to be scared of. Kip scowled suddenly, realizing he was describing himself, too.
“Breaker,” the boy said as they walked together toward the hellstone, “I’m going to stand still and try to draft. I’ll fail. Just shoot me hard with one of those green balls of yours, would you? Knock the wind out of me. Get the submission.”
“What?” Kip asked, incredulous.
“Try to make it look good, would you?”
Then Trainer Fisk was there. “Colors?” he asked.
“What?” Kip asked. He felt like he didn’t understand anything.
Trainer Fisk said, “It’s the final fight. Scrubs get access to all their colors; well, minus one for you. It’s important that scrubs learn to deal with good luck and bad in the previous testings, but we want this to be a fair test of your real fighting skill. I know you drafted red that once, but you’ve never declared it.”
“Oh, right!” Kip said. In his talks with Teia, they’d agreed that Kip should keep his polychromacy a secret as long as possible. Of course, if he kept it secret too long, he’d simply lose a fight that he could have won. Ante up and play. “Um, blue and green will be fine. So if I lose one… I’ll keep green.” It was possible that not everyone remembered him using red weeks ago in his fight with Ferkudi, or thought it a fluke, and if Kip kept fighting without other colors, he might confirm that speculation and give himself an edge later.
Winsen and Kip took their places in the dark. They pressed their fingers to the hellstone pillar to make sure they were drained of luxin, though Trainer Fisk didn’t press their fingers down very hard. Then they stepped back, and a few moments later the shutters dropped from the colored crystals overhead and the circle was lit in blue and green spotlights.
Wondering if Winsen was setting him up somehow, Kip nonetheless drafted his trusty green bouncy ball of doom. He really needed to figure out more drafting techniques. He was supposed to be some kind of polychrome, and though the little bit he was doing with Teia and Ironfist had hardly taught him anything new, it was making him better at what he already knew, but he wasn’t sure that would be enough. Strange how in becoming a drafter, it seemed like the last thing he had time to do was Across from him, Winsen had a blue staff forming in his hands. It was almost finished when he lost it. The luxin shimmered and broke apart, leaving Winsen stunned for one second.
The green ball was ready; Kip shot it straight into Winsen’s gut.
The boy was struggling to draft again and Kip’s ball blew through his hands, making him lose whatever he’d been drafting. He woofed and fell down, gasping, as if the wind had been knocked out of him.
Kip ran to the boy and put a foot on his neck. A whistle shrieked and a scattering of polite applause greeted Kip’s victory.
Kip helped Winsen stand. The boy hung his head. “Thanks,” he said, though, no sorrow in his tone.
“What the-What was that?” Kip asked.
“Don’t say anything to the trainer,” the boy said quickly. “I’m a slave, Breaker. My owner needs the money he’d get from me making it in. He needs it bad.”
“And?” Kip said. So you throw the match?
“And fuck him.”
The boy might not get another chance to get into the Blackguard.
“Do me a favor, would you?” Winsen said. “Get in. If I lost to a guy who eventually got in, it’s not so bad.”
“Do my best,” Kip promised. “Hey, Winsen? How good are you?”
Winsen grinned. “On a good day? Top five. Light to you, Breaker.”
They parted, Winsen heading toward an aghast, weeping noble. Kip would have felt sorry for the owner if he didn’t know that for some reason Winsen hated the man enough to jeopardize his own future. And Winsen seemed like a good person.
It was a good reminder. Kip thought he was at the center of everything. Everything was about Kip-and there were tragedies and comedies passing right before his eyes that he didn’t even see.
Nineteen was up next, and given that she was directly below Kip, he figured he’d get a rest. Nineteen was a girl named Tufayyur, and she was ranked appropriately, so far as Kip and Teia could guess. So she’d try for sixteen and then thirteen. Getting lucky twice was a lot more likely than getting lucky three or four times.
Kip took his place in the numbered line, starting to plot his own line of challenges. He wished that he had gotten to stand next to Teia, so he could talk it over with her. She understood this all better than he did. But then Tufayyur came to stand in front of him. “I challenge Kip,” she said.
What? Kip looked at her in disbelief and she shrugged. He followed her eyes to who was above him-Barrel and Balder. A flash of understanding illuminated the outlines of something bigger going on, but Kip lost it.
He was the sensible challenge, he supposed. Again. He’d been planning on skipping Barrel and Balder himself. Neither of them should have been placed so low. He thought they should both
be in the top fourteen.
But he had to go out to the middle of the ring again. If he lost once, he was out. Just like that.
The crowd didn’t even fall silent for these early fights. Kip couldn’t blame them, watching the worst fighters who won’t even make it in isn’t terribly interesting.
They went to the hellstone, and then took their place. The spotlights came on, blue and green, but Tufayyur wasn’t interested in drafting. She charged. She aimed a kick at the side of Kip’s head and he saw an opening to go for the knee of her other leg with a sharp low kick of his own-but that was a crippling blow. He hesitated. He absorbed her kick instead, his hesitation earning him ringing ears.
She used the opening to punch him in the face twice, light and fast, but enough to stun him.
Kip staggered backward. She hit him in the stomach, kicked for his groin-he barely deflected the latter with a knee but still took the shot in his thigh. She punched for his face again, but he ducked into the blow and her fist smashed against his forehead.
She yelped, but didn’t stop. As he hunched, she threw flurries of blows at him. Then she snagged his arm and went for a submission hold.
Kip rushed into her and they both fell, as graceful as mating turtles.
Tufayyur went for a scissor submission with her legs, but her legs weren’t long enough to get around Kip’s girth and lock easily. Kip rolled on top of her, angling the whole of his body weight onto her torso. He grabbed one of her arms with both of his and then simply lay across her face.
The girl bucked, kicking her feet up to try to roll Kip off of her, but she wasn’t strong enough. With her free hand, she went for Kip’s nuts, but he pressed his hip down, and she wasn’t strong enough to burrow underneath. She jerked, trying to get her hand away, failing.
Then she panicked, unable to breathe, flailing-and the whistle shrilled again.
There was a smattering of applause and laughter as Kip stood and offered her a hand, but she snarled at him and stormed away. “Way to go, fatty!” one of the older Blackguard trainees shouted.