by Brent Weeks
“We could go up the stairs one floor and get full light from one of the balconies there,” Big Leo said.
“There is no way I’m going up the tower,” Cruxer said. “We’re trying to get out, and the exits are all down. We go up and we have to fight through the Lightguards twice more.”
Ben-hadad came back at last. He was huffing. “I got, I got, far as the lift. Should be able to, to squeeze through. But saw out front. Out the main gate at the Lily’s Stem, there’s, there’s an ambush. Forty, fifty Lightguards. Musketeers.”
“We go up,” Kip said.
They looked at him like he was mad. And he was. Even if they got to the lift, they’d be exposed to fire from the main hall until they could go up.
“Breaker. Up?” Cruxer said.
Winsen drew his arrow and let fly. A man forty paces back stumbled and fell as he burst through the door to the slaves’ stairs. Winsen already had another arrow nocked, and released.
“Let’s go!” Cruxer said.
Winsen sent four more arrows down the hall in rapid succession while they ran, then reached into his quiver and found no more.
Ben-hadad led them through a small door where he’d knocked a huge bureau over to be able to get in. “Not by strength,” he said. “Application of a lever.”
They pushed through tiny, connected rooms, all empty. Past another narrow hall. Ben-hadad pointed. “Leads back to the barricaded door you tried, Captain.” Another: “Leads to the kitchens, there’s a door to the outside, but it’s a wall this time of day. Problems of a rotating tower,” Ben-hadad said. “Designing doors in the island mantle—which doesn’t rotate—that can be used all day long. The designer solved the problem a few years later, but the Prism’s Tower had already had its base constructed by then. Inefficient, I agree.” Kip knew what he meant—he’d experienced the same thing down in the baths—but he could tell no else did. Not that now was the time to ask questions about things that didn’t pertain to their immediate survival.
Ben-hadad said, “That hall leads to more slaves’ housing and then to a door off to the side of the ambush. We’d have some surprise. If we want to try our luck?”
“I say we do it,” Teia said. “I’ll use my little trick and cause a distraction. They’re musketeers. If I can get them to fire a volley wildly, they’ll be vulnerable. They attack me on the opposite side and then, you all fall on them from behind.”
“Twenty men? The seven of us?” Ben-hadad asked. “We’re good, Teia, but I don’t know if we’re that good.”
“Why are we discussing this?” Winsen said. “We’ve got a command structure.”
“Do we?” asked Big Leo. “We’re out of the Blackguard, Win. Maybe we should all have a voice.”
“Enough,” Cruxer said. “Breaker, you sure?”
“If we have to wait until we’re sure to decide, we’re fucked.”
“Damn it, Kip!” Teia said. “Now is not the time to be un—”
“Breaker,” Cruxer corrected.
“Breaker,” Teia said. “I saw what those things did to you. It might kill you to look at another card. Or it might take half an hour. And up? Goss died to get us down this tower. You want us to go back up?”
“The White would have an escape. It has to be near her apartments.”
“You want us to go all the way up?” Ferkudi asked.
“I’m telling you, get me light, and—” Kip started.
“Enough!” Cruxer said. “Enough! Kip, Breaker, we’re with you because we believe in you. Anyone who doesn’t, get the hell out. Make your choice.”
“I’m with you,” Teia said, but it was softly. It was surrender. To death. She would die to prove her loyalty, but she knew Kip was wrong. Everyone else was in.
“Was just a question,” Ferkudi muttered.
“Then let’s go,” Cruxer said. “And, Breaker, next time I ask if you’re sure? Lie.”
Kip took a deep breath. They were placing a great deal of faith in his intuition. If he was wrong…
If he was wrong, they would all die, instead of most or all of them dying, which was what would happen if they charged the main hall.
They arrived at yet another hall. “This way to the lift,” Ben-hadad said. He pointed down the other direction. “That way goes to a wall that will become an open door in half an hour. It should rotate open far enough for us to slip through in… maybe ten, fifteen minutes. It would put us behind the Prism’s Tower, but we’d still have to make it past the Lightguards in the yard.”
“How many of these bastards are there?” Teia asked.
“Five hundred eighty-two,” Ferkudi said.
They looked at him. It had been a rhetorical question.
Ferkudi said, “As of last week, anyway. What? Like I’m the only one who looks at the kitchen manifests?” His voice dripped sarcasm.
“Holy shit, Ferkudi,” Big Leo said.
“What? I wanted to know if there would be any Tyrean oranges at the Sun Day parties.”
Kip didn’t know whether to be more amazed that it had never occurred to Ferkudi that the Tyrean orange groves were held by the enemy—along with the rest of Tyrea—or that the big clod had somehow done the arithmetic to figure out how much food meant exactly five hundred eighty-two Lightguards, and then had remembered it.
“Trying to hold a hall against musketeers for fifteen minutes is suicide,” Cruxer said. “We go up.”
Chapter 94
“Everyone ready?” Cruxer whispered. They were behind and to the side of the lift, but they would be exposed to the musket fire from the Lightguards as they ran to get into it.
“Maybe the light’s good enough for Breaker to try here?” Teia asked.
“Teia, are you serious with this?” Ben-hadad asked.
“Sorry,” she said.
“We’re ready,” Kip told Cruxer. “Teia, maybe you could… could you use it for all of us?” Kip asked.
“No. I barely know how I use it for myself.” She pulled together the hood over her face and—despite that it had no laces or other visible means of fastening—the cloth cinched together tightly, leaving only her eyes visible. The face shimmered and disappeared, leaving what looked a hole, only her eyes floating against blackness.
Teia turned her back and Kip saw the two disks moving across the cloak. The black passed in front of the white disk like an eclipse. White light flared briefly around the black disk, and then the entire cloak shimmered and Teia disappeared.
The entire squad muttered curses.
“If we get out of this alive, I really want to study that cloak,” Ben-hadad said.
The natural light that usually suffused this chamber was cut off, the windows covered. Clearly, the Lightguards were trying to minimize their handicaps against the Mighty.
The Mighty? Is that really what we’re going to call ourselves?
The light was weak, but it was full-spectrum. With his spectacles, Kip could draft whatever he wanted. But more choices in a limited time didn’t mean you could do everything—it meant that you could do anything, so you probably did nothing, frozen with indecision. How long would it take the Lightguards following them from the stairs to find their way through all the halls and catch up?
So Kip fell back to the old standbys, albeit with far greater proficiency and less waste than he would have before all his training with Karris. He drafted the equivalent of a tower shield of green onto his left arm, and drew still more green, weakly, through his green spectacles. It was slow, but it would have to do.
And suddenly, despite the green he was drafting, he was a coward. He didn’t want to move. Didn’t want to be a target to dozens of men with muskets.
What the hell? Green had always made him invincible, had always made fear foreign.
This is what it is to grow up. It is to live beyond the blind rush of passion, or hate, or green luxin, or battle juice. It is to see what must be done, and to do it, without feeling a great desire or a great hatred or a great love. It is to confr
ont fear, naked. No armor of bombast or machismo. Just duty, and love for one’s fellows. Not love felt, not the love that compelled action without thought, but love chosen deliberately. I am the best person to do this thing, it said, though I may die doing it.
I will go, it said, with clear eyes and no passion, but it was love, love, love all the same.
The drug that was green luxin had no hold on Kip, but he took a deep breath, and ran.
He ran, on tiptoe. He ran, without screaming defiance. He ran as silently as possible. And running in such a way, he ran without being detected, almost all the way to the lift.
A shout rang out as he threw himself into the lift. There was white stone here, lit from the mirrors above, and it gave him green sluggishly, even as he lay down and raised the shield, sideways, making an embankment of green luxin.
The rest of the squad was hot on his heels. Winsen threw a yellow flashbomb, and it hit right in front of the turning Lightguards. Perfect throw, perfect flashbomb. Several of the Lightguards, scared out of their minds, clenched fingers on their triggers. The roar of matchlocks in their ears and resounding magnified off the stone walls only doubled the confusion of the Lightguards, who’d only turned in time to be blinded.
Only one or two of all of them got shots off even vaguely in the direction of the squad. The whine of ricochets sounded off the far walls.
Cruxer leapt over Kip’s shield and threw the counterweights, ignoring the danger, and was about to throw the release to fling them upward when Kip cried, “Cruxer, no! Ben!”
Ben-hadad had gone sprawling. He picked himself up immediately, but fell again. His knee was red, and when he stepped again, it turned a direction a knee shouldn’t turn.
Ferkudi was up in an instant. He hopped up over Kip’s wide shield and ran out. Shots rattled into Kip’s shield, and Kip was frozen. The shield embankment was open luxin, if he let it go, they’d all be vulnerable. They could all die.
This was his part. This, now, in this moment, was the totality of what he could do. If he tried to be a hero, his friends would die. As they might die anyway.
He shook as the Lightguards recovered and more brought their weapons to bear, some aiming at Kip and the others in the lift, and some aiming at Ferkudi leaping out of the lift and Ben-hadad on the floor.
A blunderbuss seemed to appear out of midair, to the side of the crescent of Lightguards. Hammer slapped down, and sparks and fire and molten death shot out, raking across the front line. It could only be Teia. Kip’s eyes widened to sub-red in an instant, and the inane thought floated into his mind: I couldn’t have widened my eyes that fast six months ago. Progress!
He saw Teia flinging the spent blunderbuss into the still-standing Lightguards. Then she hefted the other blunderbuss that she’d balanced against her left leg, and shot the second rank of Lightguards.
One or two shot vaguely in her direction before she discharged that shot, then she was off, legs briefly visible as her cloak swung free of her legs. But none of the Lightguards saw it. The attack from midair was too surprising, too disorienting. They almost broke.
Kip saw the moment yawn open. One more touch, his Guile mind said, and these men will flee.
But he was holding the green shield and he couldn’t—
Ferkudi heaved Ben-hadad into the lift, and Teia—visible now—jumped in a moment after. Cruxer threw the lever.
The lift shot up. It hit the first stop, throwing them all into the air, and ground to a stop. It fell back to the ground.
There were shouts of alarm, pain, injury, weakness, and rage going up from the Lightguards. Kip stood up, dropping the green shield, as Cruxer wrestled to put on more counterweights.
A man was rushing them. Kip drafted a green spike and stabbed him in the face. The Lightguard fell into him, still alive, still fighting. Kip elbowed him across the nose, and he went down. Saw another man rushing them, a blunderbuss in one hand.
Kip shot another green spike but missed as the man slipped on a pool of blood.
The man slid almost into their feet. He didn’t try to stand; instead, he grabbed for the blunderbuss. At this range, he might take out half the squad.
Winsen was on him with a knife in an instant.
The knife went in and out and in and out of the man’s belly, like a tailor rapidly drawing a stitch.
In and out and in and out and in and out and in and out, Winsen wasn’t stopping, and it was cold and it was hot and it was bloody and wet and slick and dirty and gruesome and necessary. The man was still fighting, drawing the end of his blunderbuss down to point at Winsen’s face.
Ferkudi leapt onto the pile and pointed the barrel out toward more charging Lightguards. Winsen yanked the trigger and the blunderbuss fired, and the Lightguards were peppered with whatever had been in the barrel, but were too far away to be killed.
With his one good hand, Big Leo hauled the man off the pile and threw him off the lift. But another Lightguard was already coming, face bloodied but not stopping. Kip shot a hammerfist of green and blew a shower of teeth and blood across himself. The Lightguard fell across the gap, halfway between being in the lift and not in it as Cruxer threw the lever again.
They flew upward, and the Lightguard flew up with them into the lift shaft. He screamed as his body blocked the lift’s ascent, pinched between the floor of the lift and the sides of the lift shaft.
But he only screamed for a moment, as muscle and bone and mail tore. Half a man was left as they flew skyward, and then as they rammed through the one-way doors at each level, and the body got trapped and scraped off at each successive level, less and less. Half, a third, a head and an arm, a helmet with a head in it, and then nothing at all—of what had been a man, ten seconds ago.
Kip fell backward onto his ass, staring horrified, as a man disappeared into the maw of war.
They clanged through level after level. With how much counterweight Cruxer had set, they never paused long. Several times, they saw astounded guards, who never so much as fired their muskets.
And then the squad hit the top level.
None of them had reloaded on the trip up. Inexperience, or trauma, or plain horror overwhelming their training. Kip hadn’t drawn in any more luxin.
There was no Lightguard checkpoint, and the Blackguards recognized them and came running. Cruxer kept his cool, and it was a blessing from Orholam himself, because out of the others, only Winsen kept his, too. Together, they pulled everyone off the lift.
“Lightguards,” Cruxer said to the Blackguards stationed there. “They’re after us. You can’t fight them or you’ll start a war. But please, please, help.”
“Oh, shit!” Kip said. “Where’s Teia?”
She spoke behind him. “I’m right here. Cruxer waited for me to get in the lift.”
The Blackguards on duty were baffled. The woman, Nerra, went immediately to Ben-hadad, though, and started examining his leg.
“What are you talking about?” Little Piper asked. “What’s happening? We’ve seen the wall crystals going crazy, but they aren’t any of our codes, and we couldn’t leave our posts. The commander hasn’t answered any of our queries.”
“Commander Ironfist’s been kicked out of the Blackguard,” Kip said. It occurred to him that he should lie, that lying would make it easier to get these two on their side.
“Orholam, Ben-hadad, what have they done to you?” Nerra said. “Who’s behind this?”
“My grandfather,” Kip said. “He set the Lightguard after us, and he’s the one who relieved Ironfist of his position.”
“What? What?!” Little Piper demanded. He wasn’t a tall man, but he was wide, with a shaved head and intense brown eyes under half-halos of yellow and orange.
“The commander agreed to go quietly. He didn’t want to cause war between the Blackguard and the Lightguard. Said the promachos would take the excuse to eliminate the Blackguard altogether.”
“To hell with that!” Little Piper said. “I’ll, I’ll—”
“Shut up,” Nerra said. “We’ll delay them, young ones. What are you doing?”
“We need to go to the White’s room. Can we?” Kip asked.
They could stop them.
The two Blackguards looked at each other. Some silent understanding went between them. They were in love, Kip saw, some intuitive part of him seeing it from how they understood each other.
“I’m sure I don’t need to say this, but I need to say this,” Little Piper said. “The White’s in there still. She’s dead. You won’t disturb her.”
“Of course,” Cruxer said. “Is Ben-hadad fit to travel? Ben, do you still want to come with us?”
“He’ll never fight again,” Nerra said. She looked at Ben-hadad. “The leg’s ruined. Sorry to say it, but it’s true.”
Ben-hadad shrank. “Can I come? Please?” He turned to Cruxer. “I don’t want to… I can’t be left behind. I’m no Daelos, you understand? This squad is everything to me.”
Nerra nodded, and so did Cruxer, who said, “I’ll carry you if I have to.”
“We’ll buy you as much time as we can without a clash of arms,” Nerra said. “Go, and Orholam shield you.”
They ran down the hall and up the stairs and went past the two Blackguards who stood silent at the White’s door. Kip recognized Gill Greyling, but each Blackguard pretended not to see them.
Kip went out to the balcony. It was still early morning. Orholam’s beard, how was it still early morning? It felt like a thousand years since dawn.
He rummaged through his pack, looking for the card he’d tucked away not half an hour ago. He glanced at the White’s bed, where her corpse lay. He kissed thumb and two fingers and flung a quick blessing at her.
He found the card in his breast pocket. It had been preserved between plates of glass. Kip had nicely broken those in his tumble down the stairs, but the card was undamaged. He drew it out and, while rapidly switching between spectacles and sheathing each as he was done with it in order to draw in all seven colors at once, said, “I have no idea how long this will take me. Just… just defend me. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“We’ll hold,” Ferkudi said, and he spoke for them all.
