The Blinding Knife(188)

“Why?” Kip asked. The numbers were spinning in his head.

“Because Asmun’s already lost. He’s got no challenge token, so he knows he can’t make it in this season at all. He won’t fight as hard because there’s nothing at stake. See, you have to reshuffle the order every time someone wins, and keep track of who has and who doesn’t have their challenge token. That way you can skip the more difficult fights. But of course, we have to keep in mind that some people will feign weaknesses until the last week so they have an advantage.”

“Like you.” That was why Teia had wanted Kip to take credit for the courier idea.

“Yes, like me.”

“Oh hell no,” Kip said. Talk about vast areas of lore he knew nothing about. “No, no, no, this is hopeless. I can’t figure this all out!” He stood up. “No, I’m tired. Forget this—”

“Kip, if you don’t figure this out, you’re not going to make it into the Blackguard. You’re not a good enough fighter, so you need to be smarter than people who are better fighters than you. That is what people admired about Ayrad.”

“The man who defeated all the other fighters in the Blackguard wasn’t admired because he was a good fighter? I find that hard to believe.”

“Kip, he was able to figure out exactly how to finish last every month and still make it in. That means he was figuring exactly who would challenge whom and who would win those fights—every month. If he figured wrong once, he would have failed out early.”

“So he’s admired for losing intelligently? That’s mad.”

“He’s admired for knowing his friends and knowing his enemies and outwitting them all.”

“So what happened to him?” Kip asked.

“He became commander of the Blackguard and saved the lives of four different Prisms over the course of his career—and then someone poisoned him.”

“So he wasn’t perfect,” Kip said grumpily.

“He was perfect for twenty-four years. That’s a lot longer than most of us can even dream.”

“Sorry,” Kip said. He could tell that somehow the dead commander meant a lot to Teia.

“Don’t pout. We’ve got work to do.”

“Hold on, before we do all that, I want you to take your papers. You keep on avoiding this. Look, all you have to do is sign them and we can take them to be registered tomorrow.”

“Kip, don’t be an idiot.”

Kip was so tired he wanted to cry. He lifted his hands helplessly.

“What happens after you free me, Kip?”

“Uh, you’re free?”

“And poor.”

“Didn’t we already talk about this?” Kip asked.

“What happens when a slave gets into the Blackguard, Kip?”

“They’re freed, sort of.”

“They’re purchased, for a fortune. And as soon as a scrub passes the test, their contract goes into escrow until final vows. If you free me now, you get nothing.”

“I don’t want to own you, Teia. It doesn’t feel right. Do you even want to be in the Blackguard?”

“Of course I do!”

“I don’t even know if I should believe you. You can’t tell me that you don’t, can you?”

“What? I’m a slave, not a liar, Kip.”

He scowled. “It’s more complicated than that, and we both know it.”

She looked at him like he was crazy for a long moment, then the façade crumbled. One second she was all breezy confidence and happiness, and the next she looked terribly vulnerable and frightened. “Kip… I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Ever since you said you’d free me. You know that the first thing I felt was angry—at you? Because as soon as you won me, I stopped getting my lessons in how to draft paryl. I’ll get them again, but I’ll have to wait years. Nothing in my life changed except that, and I was mad at you. Stupid, huh? Kip, part of me tells me to take those papers and run to the registrar. To take my freedom while it’s sitting there in front of me. It tells me slave owners are notoriously fickle. Sorry.”

“No offense taken,” Kip mumbled.

“My family’s in debt, Kip. My mother did some bad things, and my father lost everything, including me and my sisters. He was a trader like I said, but his creditors won’t let him go on another voyage because they’re afraid he’ll flee, so he’s stuck working as a day laborer. With what he’s earning now, there’s no way he can pay off what he owes. He can’t afford to buy inventory to trade at home. If I take those papers now, I’m condemning him to poverty, and my sisters to early marriages to the first poor men my father can convince to take them.”