The Blinding Knife(15)

After Gavin and Karris left, Commander Ironfist and the Blackguards had taken over the fastest galleass in the fleet and, taking Kip, had headed for the Chromeria.

Everyone had been busy all the time for the first few days, with the Blackguards following the sailors’ lead and trying to learn their craft. Commander Ironfist didn’t want his Guards to sit idle, and given the chance to master some new skill, they dove right in. The sailors grumbled at first, but were eventually won over by how quickly the Blackguards learned.

For those who weren’t on duty, Ironfist supervised shifts of sparring and calisthenics on the galleass’s small castle. Kip was allowed to watch, but mostly he tried to keep out of the way. It had taken him days to figure out when the commander would have a few empty minutes for Kip to bother him.

The commander looked at Kip. Nodded. Walked back into the cabin the captain was sharing with him for his work.

Kip had mustered his courage, but now he found it leaking away as they came into the small room and sat at a little table. “Sir, I… During the battle at Garriston, I—Well, some of it doesn’t seem real, like I’m remembering things that couldn’t really have happened, do you know what I—But that’s not what I…” Kip was being stupid, inarticulate. He flexed with his bandaged hand. It hurt. “I killed the king—satrap—whatever. When I did it, Master Danavis—I mean, General Danavis—shouted at me, saying I’d fouled everything. I didn’t mean to disobey, it just didn’t—I don’t know, maybe I did mean to disobey.” The words wouldn’t come out right. He felt like he was veering all over the place. He’d killed people, and part of him had liked it. Like he was smashing in the faces of those who wouldn’t take him seriously. Except that he had literally smashed faces in, and when he thought about it, he felt wretched. But that was too hard to say. “I still don’t know what I messed up, and what it cost. Can you tell me?”

Commander Ironfist drew a deep breath. Seemed to reconsider. “Hand,” he said.

Kip presented his right hand, not sure what the imposing commander wanted.

Commander Ironfist looked at him flatly.

“Oh!” Kip presented his left hand. The commander unwrapped the bandage. He said, “I was fourteen years old when I killed my first man. My mother was the deya of Aghbalu—a regional governor—and she was angling to depose Paria’s satrapah and become satrapah herself, though I didn’t know that then. I was walking past her chambers one day, and I heard her cry out. I had first drafted perhaps two weeks before. I went in, and I saw the assassin. Small man, features of the despised Gatu tribe, teeth stained from chewing khat, and poison on the wavy blade of his kris. I remember thinking that only if I drafted could I stop him in time. But the drafting didn’t just happen as it had two weeks before. He stabbed my mother, and while I stood there, not believing what I’d seen, he jumped out the window he’d climbed in and tried to escape over the roofs. I chased him, and I beat him with my fists, and I threw him off the roof.”

Kip swallowed. Ironfist had chased an assassin, unarmed, across rooftops, and killed a man armed with a poisoned blade—when he was fourteen?

Ironfist paused, examining Kip’s burned hand. He gestured for the ointment the chirurgeons had given Kip and rubbed it on the raw skin. Kip hissed and clenched every muscle in his body to keep from crying out.

“You need to stretch your fingers,” Ironfist said. “All day, every day. If you don’t, your fingers will tighten up into claws in no time. The scars will freeze your palm and fingers, and you’ll have to split your skin open just to move. Take a little pain now or a lot later.”

This was a little pain?

Commander Ironfist went back to his story as he wrapped Kip’s hand in fresh bandages. “The point isn’t that I’m a hard man, Kip. The point is I made mistakes. My mother was trained in dawat, our tribe’s martial art. Not highly proficient, but trained well for a civilian. If I hadn’t come in the room and she hadn’t been worried for me, she could have fended him off until her guards came. And once I chased him down, I shouldn’t have killed him. We could have found out who sent him.”

“But you were just a boy,” Kip said. Having his hand wrapped back up and immobile was like crawling back into a warm bed on a cold morning.

“And so are you,” Commander Ironfist said. Kip started to protest, but Commander Ironfist wasn’t finished. “Even if you weren’t, I’ve seen grown men and women make worse mistakes in battle. If we naturally made good decisions in battle, there’d be no need to train for it.”