The Blinding Knife(205)

Teia slowed down from her run before reaching her skinny opponent, but she acted almost as quickly, feigning a punch at the man’s face, then kicking him in the groin. As he hunched over instinctively from the pain, his face met her rising knee with explosive results.

Lucia tried to engage her own target, but that man was more worried about Cruxer. Cruxer caught the man’s descending club in an X block, brought his hands down to grab the man. But the thug snatched his hands back too quickly, barely holding on to the club.

It didn’t matter. Cruxer connected one of his shin-strikes across the man’s leg. The man went down, howling. Cruxer was on top of him in a moment, standing with one foot trapping the man’s foot, and his other foot on the man’s knee. He could cripple him in an instant just by shifting his weight.

Instead, Cruxer looked over to the rest of them. Kip hadn’t even seen how Aram had dealt with his opponent, but the man was down. None of the others looked like they were going to put up any more fight.

Cruxer grinned, wild, elated, charming. It was the look of a boy who can’t believe that all of his training actually works. That he is become what he has always hoped to be. It was, Kip knew, an innocent look. He felt a gulf open between him and the older boy. Cruxer was a warrior-in-training, but he wasn’t a warrior yet. Cruxer would be an excellent warrior, but he was also a good man. He wouldn’t lose his excellence, but he would lose this joy when he saw heads explode, when he watched friends try to hold in their life’s blood as it pumped out of their guts, when he listened to his enemies whimpering and shivering as they died too slowly.

“Let’s go!” Cruxer said. “Lucia, you guard the back next time.”

“Give me shooting lanes next time,” Kip said. “I’ve got luxin.”

They ran on. Kip was getting tired, but he realized that just a few months ago he wouldn’t even have been able to jog this far. Now he was keeping up with the others. He’d still be the first to tire, and the first to quit, but he wasn’t quitting yet.

On the next block, they caught sight of a group of maybe a dozen men, trying to cut them off, and then stopping and cursing as the squad crossed into the Ilytian neighborhood.

Incredibly, they crossed through the Ilytian area with no trouble. Kip could only guess that the gangs here hadn’t heard about them yet.

They didn’t cross through the market, though. Kip hadn’t realized how formidable his own group looked: the guards whom he’d thought would be unhappy to see an armed gang were definitely unhappy to see Kip and his friends. So Cruxer turned them south again.

“Men following,” Lucia said. “Five or six of ’em. Seventy paces back.”

Kip looked, and immediately felt dumb for doing it. Now they knew he knew. Stupid!

“Kip? You know this neighborhood?” Cruxer asked.

“Sorry.”

“Anyone?” Cruxer asked. “If so, talk quick. I’m not feeling so great about this.”

“I’ve been here,” Aram said. “I think I can—Follow me.”

He led them for several blessedly uneventful blocks, and Kip started to think they might make it back without any more fights.

Then they rounded a corner. What had looked like it would lead to an open, wide street was gated and chained. There was only the narrow street they’d entered from, and one alley out of the wide space between houses. In the alley, there had to be twenty men. Aram swore.

“Anyone feel like dropping three spots?” Kip asked.

No one answered. That was a no. Not this close to the final test. They’d take a beating if they had to, but none of them was going to just give up.

Kip stepped forward. He braced his feet.

“Semicircle,” Cruxer said. “I got point. Kip, you stand on that rock, you should be able to keep drafting while we fight. The rest of us, don’t let anyone into the middle of our semicircle.”

They formed up as Kip gathered his will. The men in the alley were jogging forward now, constrained in the tight space. Kip didn’t know what he was going to do until he was already drafting the big green ball into his fist. It was stupid. If he’d had the practicum, there would be a hundred different things he could do that would work better—but he hadn’t. He knew how to do this. Fine. He was the ignorant boy from Tyrea who didn’t know any better. He’d show them.

The ball swelled bigger than his head and Kip threw his hands forward with a yell.

The green luxin ball shot out at chest level at great speed. For once, Kip didn’t fall on his butt from the recoil. In the confines of the alley, the men didn’t have anywhere to dodge. The ball glanced off a man in the front row and then ricocheted back and forth. Five or ten went down as the rest surged into the open space.