by Brent Weeks
They had been given tailed white jackets with big brass buttons and medals for trifles. Worse, they were given some of the Blackguard’s prerogatives: allowed to walk through the Chromeria armed, for one.
And they were being taught—by the promachos’s incontrovertible order—by a Blackguard. It was like being forced to gut yourself with a rusty knife.
“Today, Specials,” Trainer Fisk said, spitting in the direction of the Lightguards, but then turning away.
Almost all of their training was special assignments now, and there was little pretense that it was only training. The swearing in to full Blackguard status of the best inductees had been halted. Commander Ironfist had seen that once sworn, his people were sent to duties like training Lightguards, so he held on to them.
Other Blackguards were being sent on other missions: some of them searching for Gavin, others disappearing for days or weeks, and coming back, sworn to silence about what they’d been doing. Word got out, at least in Blackguard circles, though. They were looking for bane. They said there might be nexuses of each of the seven colors out there somewhere. Which, to Kip’s ears, sounded like more gods to fight.
Some of them reported strange sights, odd phenomena they’d encountered. One brought back a small lizard called a sand dragon from Atash. The nunks thought it was the least exciting dragon ever. It didn’t breathe fire or anything interesting, but when they killed it, they were able to set it on fire without any other fuel, and it burned for three days. Somehow the things incorporated red luxin into their bodies, much like atasifusta trees used to do. This was the first one that had been seen in many years.
In Ruthgar, there were stories of the grasslands—usually dormant and brown this late in the year—growing green in great nine-pointed stars. It might have been the work of rogue green drafters fertilizing the plains to make a statement for the Color Prince, but two of the Blackguards had seen one. They believed what they had seen was far too big to be the work of even three or four green drafters working together.
In Paria, a team had found a town where half the wells were full of orange luxin. The village elders swore that there were no orange drafters nearby. And in a week, the luxin simply disappeared.
There were wilder rumors, too, of firestorms in Tyrea, where instead of lightning, great streaks of fire splashed down with the rain and hail and snow. Sinkholes in Abornea. Boiling seas off Pericol. Animals acting strangely, and even plants seeming to act with intent. It was impossible to filter the truth from the nonsense and, quickly, impossible to get some of the books from the restricted libraries that had been sitting right under the squad’s nose. Scholars appointed by Andross himself came in, grabbed a bunch of books and scrolls, and left without a word.
And all the time, the war was being fought. The enemy was advancing. Others were fighting in their place, far away.
With them all formed up, Trainer Fisk said, “Today your assignment, every squad, is to go to the docks on East Bay. The Lists are being read. Go.”
He stopped.
“And what, sir?” an Archer named Kerea asked. “What are we to do?”
“You listen. Was there something unclear about your orders? Go!”
They went.
“What was that about?” Ferkudi asked before they even reached the Lily’s Stem.
Cruxer seemed somber. But he didn’t answer. Kip took his lead and didn’t answer either. Knowing what a lesson was beforehand didn’t mean you had to blunt its impact on those who didn’t.
“Let’s take it at a jog,” Cruxer said.
They jogged through the enclosed bridge as the sunrise shone brilliance on them. Kip had two thoughts: first, that he was no longer baffled at the wonders of magic of these islands. Running through a luxin tube suspended at the level of the waves had somehow become normal to him. The awkward bumpkin was gone. He wasn’t sure that was all good. How insular the Jasperites became, every day seeing magic the likes of which a Tyrean orchardist would never see in his life, every day rubbing shoulders with women and men who harnessed Orholam’s breath itself. All the world turned around the Jaspers, but the Jaspers were not all the world. Second, he realized there was now no sign at all of the sea demon attack that had nearly demolished this bridge. The sea demon itself hadn’t been seen since the Feast of Light and Darkness, nor the black whale. The mess had been cleared, the dead taken away—and none of them were people Kip had known, or known by people Kip knew. It was like it hadn’t happened.
This is what it is to live in the cosmos that is the Jaspers. The world changes here, but here there is not one world, there are many, and we only see the others when they tread upon our toes.
They made it to the docks and slowed as they pushed through the press of bodies. Cruxer acted as a wedge, and Big Leo went second, clearing a path for the rest of them. In their inductees’ grays, no one resisted them.
There was a tall carven pedestal just wide enough for a crier to stand on, and a man was clambering up the ladder to stand there. He reached into a pouch he wore and pulled out a scroll. He cracked the seal, and the crowd quieted, then he allowed the scroll to unfurl.
Murmurs shot through the crowd as they saw the scroll unroll past his feet. But they quieted again as the man began reading, his voice a clear, cutting tenor that carried easily over the murmurs and the sounds of sailors unloading their ships, wagons creaking past on old wheels. “This is the list of those dead or missing and believed to be dead who hail from Big Jasper or the Chromeria, from the end of the skirmish at Ruic Neck until the end of the Battle of Ox Ford. This list is complete and truthful to the best of my knowledge, so swears Lord Commander of the Unified Armies of the Satrapies, Caul Azmith.”
And then he began reading names. Noblewomen first, then noblemen. Scant few though there were of either. Then female drafters, then male drafters. As slaves—despite being drafters—the Blackguards came next, barely before the commoners.
“Of the Blackguard: Elessia, Laya, Tugertent, Ahhanen, Djur, Norl Jumper, and Pan Harl.”
And then he read on, as if those were but a few names of the hundreds or thousands he had yet to read this day, as if this was simply his work. Which of course it was.
“Norl Jumber, Orholam damn you. Jumber,” Big Leo said under his breath.
It was Ben-hadad, the smart one, who said the dumbest thing. “They could just be missing, right? I mean, this doesn’t mean they’re dead. Not all of them. It’s a list of the dead and missing. Right?”
Cruxer didn’t even turn his head. “There’s a hope that empowers, and a hope that enfeebles. Don’t confuse them.”
Someone down the line choked, strangling a sob. Ferkudi? Kip wondered why he wasn’t feeling anything at all, except awkward that he wasn’t feeling what he was supposed to feel. What was wrong with him? What if someone else in the squad looked at him and could tell that while they stood and grieved, he was just standing?
He remembered Elessia. She was small, crooked grin, crooked teeth, light-skinned for a Blackguard, got duty with the White a lot. Laya: she was a red, older. Kip could remember her weeping on the barges as they came back from Garriston. Oh, that was it. She’d had to kill her partner, who’d broken the halo in the middle of the battle. Tugertent was a literal archer, and the best in the Blackguard at that. People swore they’d seen her hit targets around corners, which she’d never denied. Ahhanen Kip could only remember in that he always looked like he’d just drunk wine gone to vinegar. His partner was Djur, who had a trick of juggling two pistols and knife in dizzying patterns to amuse his comrades. Liked to gamble, and was bad at it, from what Kip had heard. Norl Jumber was small and eager, none too bright, but always infectiously happy. Pan Harl had been an inductee, like Kip and his squad. He shouldn’t even have been there.
They couldn’t just be gone. Not just like that. A name read aloud in a square, and that was it? What had happened to them? Had they died heroically, or were they merely in the wrong place and their card had been pulled?
A thousand names, and he was only reading the dead who hailed from the Jaspers. Someone said that the Ruthgari armies had taken the most grievous losses by far.
Orholam have mercy, how many people had died?
The squads stood at attention for fifteen minutes as the names were read. Name after name after name. As each lord’s dead was read, some would sob or shriek or collapse, while others tried not to let too much relief show. But as the list continued relentlessly, the balance shifted. The mood darkened. The brightly shining sun glistened in mockery, as if Orholam didn’t see.
In some distant corner, a fight had broken out among the bereaved. Furious, flailing against the truth, punishing the innocent. The bitter aggrieved and the guiltily relieved, fighting.
When the crier finished, there was only silence and sobs, the broken being led away by stunned friends.
Kip wanted to shout at them. You thought this was a game?! When Tyreans were dying it was exciting, but now, now it’s serious?! He hated them for a moment, but the moment passed, and he saw their sorrow and was moved.
That they have learned to weep at war is no victory. That they know loss is no gain.
Then the crier announced where the names of each satrapy’s dead would be posted around the plaza, and got down from his pedestal. There was no other word. No update.
They hadn’t announced the battle as a victory, or even as holding off the enemy. That lack, as much as the number of names read did, told Kip there had been only crushing defeat.
“This is why,” Cruxer said. The squad looked at him. “This is why we have to be the best.”
Chapter 49
Teia was following Murder Sharp again, to a different neighborhood. The winter night was cold, but at least this time there was no fog. It didn’t make her feel much better.
“So, this lightsplitter thing…” Teia said. That was what tonight was about, and Teia was worrying at the knotted rope of anxieties in her gut.
“Was that a question?”
“I don’t get it. I mean, I get it. A Prism doesn’t need spectacles. Handy for him, I’m sure, but I’m a monochrome and paryl doesn’t require spectacles. So even if I were a lightsplitter, that would be like … what? Like being the best juggler in the satrapies, only I don’t have any arms?”
“Exactly like that.”
“Really?”
“No.”
They arrived at a dark-windowed home in Weasel Rock, were handed their hooded robes and ushered in to darkness.
“Strip naked.” The voice was gruff, deliberately altered, the figure hooded, a splotch of black against the darkness.
The room was almost pitch black, a tiny thread of light let in under the door, and pants-wettingly scary, but Teia wasn’t anyone’s slave, not anymore. Not Aglaia Crassos’s, not Kip’s, not Andross Guile’s, and certainly not Fear’s.
“Well, that answers one question,” Teia said to the heavily cloaked figure. “You’re definitely male.” Her voice was snide, superior, anything but terrified. That knot in her guts wasn’t fear, it was apprehension, anxiety, animus, bitterness, bile, belligerence, contempt, contumely … cravenness.
Fuck.
No, fuck him.
“Strip.” Definitely male, definitely irritated, definitely not very good at disguising his voice when vexed. A bit of a haze smoker, if she didn’t miss her guess, from the rough edges on that voice.
“That’s not going to happen,” she said. Fucking amateurs. She cursed mentally when she was trying to convince herself of her own toughness. Her knees weren’t trembling from fear. It was fucking cold in this fucking place.
Damn. Doing it double time. Much more of this, and my underwear is going to need an extra washing.
“Your disobedience has been noted. I have whores to humiliate for my pleasure. This is no test of your virtue. Nor indeed, of your will. This is a test of lightsplitting.”
A part of her thrilled with sudden hope, but she hid it. “And I need to be ass-naked to do it?”
“It works best if—”
“So no.”
“When beginning—”
“You want me naked for one of two reasons. Either to humiliate me and make me feel vulnerable, or for the gratification of your sick desires. Go to hell.”
“Oh, Teia.” Low and amused, somehow more dangerous when he said “Teia.” Oh hell. “Sick desires? To see a comely young woman naked? In what world is that a sick desire? True, your curves are late in coming, but I’ve noticed a change even in the last few—”
“Fuck you!” She trembled. He’d been watching? For months? Orholam’s poxy gemsack! How dare he comment on—fuck! She was not going to be extra aware of her body because of one word from this asshole.
She looked around the dark room. Nondescript, nothing to differentiate it from any of a thousand other rooms in a thousand other houses in the bad neighborhoods of Big Jasper. What was she playing at? Why was she here? Who did she think she was, playing these games, with these people?
She’d been at the reading of the Lists. She knew the stakes. There might have been a time when being a Blackguard inductee would have protected her, when fear of what the Blackguard would do to avenge her if she were harmed would have kept her safe anywhere in the world.
That was before the war. Now, she knew, even here on Big Jasper she wasn’t safe.
The worst of it was the secrecy. Not being able to tell her squad, not being able to tell Kip? It tore her up, but it was the only safe way. For them.
“This isn’t a debate. You’ll serve or you’ll die. It would be a terrible waste to lose you at this point, but if you’re disobedient now, how would we ever trust you with more power?”
“You’re an asshole,” Teia said. “I’ll wear my underthings.”
A pause. “Good, I’d distrust you if you gave in too easily.” He’d let the alteration on his gruff voice fade a bit there, and it gave Teia some small measure of victory.
She stripped. It was pitch black in here anyway, right?
“Put this on,” he said, voice gruff again.
With some difficulty, she widened her eyes to sub-red and saw that the hooded figure wasn’t extending the bundle exactly to her. She’d taken a step to the side as she’d stripped, and he hadn’t noticed. He wasn’t a sub-red drafter, then. Or paryl. She tucked the information away. Someday she’d need it. Maybe. It made her feel less like a victim to do something, regardless. She took the bundle.
A sack, no, another weasel-bear mask, this one bedecked with patches and straps.
The man said, “The test requires that you not use your eyes at all. Everyone cheats. It’s impossible not to.”
It’s impossible not to? Said like someone who’d taken the test and failed, perhaps?
Teia pulled on the hood. She didn’t have any idea if she’d put it on the right way, where the straps went. Orholam, it was hot and stuffy and she couldn’t breathe right in—
Someone touched her naked shoulder.
She jumped, but it wasn’t the startled little-girl response it would have been even a year ago. She jumped, one foot shifting back, head ducking the blow that must be coming, center of mass dropping until that back foot gave her a base, and one fist snapping forward with the speed and force of all her emotional and muscular tension together.
Her fist sank into a stomach. In Blackguard training, one of the less fun drills involved taking hits in the stomach. You’d stand with a partner and trade blows. There were different strategies depending on how big you were. Clench and move back just as the punch hit you so you didn’t take the full force, or if you were bigger and rock-hard, clench and move into the punch so it hit you before it was in the golden zone.
But always, always, you clenched your muscles hard. This stomach wasn’t fat, but it wasn’t clenched either: it was soft, muscles loose, and her fist sank into it easily.
There was a moment of total silence as Teia realized what she’d just done. The scuff of a shoe as the man took a step back, and then the sound of him collapsing on the ground. A moment later, there was a huge gasping breath as he got his wind back.
Teia froze. Chuckles sounded around the room. Five, six people?
“Faces out!” the man snapped. “You’re not to see her!”
Teia heard the man she’d hit—the same man who’d been tormenting her?—stand up.
“No!” a second voice said. Master Sharp? “We wanted a fighter. We got one. Strike her and I’ll strike you.”
The first man stood close to Teia, his breath on her mask. She stood still, very still, not giving him any more excuse than she already had—and noted how tall he was, to tuck away in her head.
“My apologies,” she said, putting real apology into her tone and speaking loudly and clearly so she could be heard through the hood.
“To the test,” he said. “Let’s not take all night.”
“I’ll be adjusting your hood,” the man said. “Do that again, and I’ll…” He barely disguised his voice this time. Nobleman’s voice. Ruthgari accent. Younger. Got you, Teia thought.
He turned the hood so that two thick pads were over her eyes and a hole was over her mouth. Thank Orholam, she could breathe! Then he tightened the straps behind her head and under her chin. There were many layers of cloth and leather between her closed eyes and the outside world. He stepped away from her.
Then something changed; Teia couldn’t even tell what.
The commander spoke: “To split light is to touch the raw stuff of creation and to bend it to your will. To draft light is to participate in the divine, but to manipulate light itself in its pure form is to be divine. Adrasteia, we seek the spark of divinity within you. We begin easily. This test will determine if you can see colors with your skin.”
