The Blinding Knife(22)

“They’ll hate you for me,” his father had told him. Then that lopsided, winsome Guile grin had struck. “But don’t worry, eventually they’ll hate you for you, too.”

It was his first day, so Kip was guessing he was being hated for Gavin Guile this time.

Samite was gone when he got out into the hall. Kip supposed the Blackguards worked on shifts. She’d probably thought he could get through one lecture without getting in trouble.

Oops.

Go ahead, he thought as he sat on the floor in the Chromeria’s hall, feel sorry for yourself. You’ve been acknowledged as a bastard of the most powerful man in the world. He saved your life many times, and he gave you the choice. You could have entered the Chromeria anonymously. You chose this.

Kip had thought he’d have at least one friend here, though. Liv had been here—until Garriston. She’d been nice to him, though she saw him as a little brother. But now she was gone, fighting for the Color Prince, choosing to believe comforting lies. Kip hated her for that, despised her for seeking the easy way out—but most of all he missed her.

He sat close to the door, trying to overhear Magister Kadah’s lecture, trying to think about magic so he didn’t think about anything else. The magister was saying something about the properties of green luxin? He thought about trying to draft some right here in the hall. It would be a bad idea, though. Green made you wild, made you disregard authority. Now would be a bad time for that. He smiled, though, thinking about it.

“Are you Kip?” a voice intruded, breaking Kip out of his fantasy. The speaker was a tiny, clean-shaven, very dark Parian man in a starched headscarf and a slave’s robe of fine cotton.

“Uh, yes.” Kip stood and the ball of dread that dropped into his stomach told him who’d sent the slave.

The man eyed him for long moments, clearly judging him, but not letting the verdict show in his face. Andross Guile’s head slave and right hand was named Grinwoody, Gavin had told Kip. Grinwoody said, “Luxlord Guile requires your presence.”

Luxlord Guile, as in Andross Guile, one of the richest men in the world, with estates throughout Ruthgar, Blood Forest, and Paria. On the ruling council known as the Spectrum, he was the Red. Father of two Prisms, Gavin and the rebel who’d almost destroyed the world, Dazen. Andross Guile was, Kip thought, the only man in the world Gavin Guile feared.

Grandfather.

And Kip was a bastard, a blot on the family honor. Felia Guile, Kip’s grandmother and the only person who could massage Andross Guile’s tyranny, was now dead.

But before Kip ran face first into that wall, he had another problem. He couldn’t leave the hall without giving Magister Kadah fresh reasons to hate him, and he couldn’t show Andross Guile disrespect by making him wait.

“Uh, will you tell my magister that I’ve been summoned?” Kip asked.

Grinwoody looked at him, expressionless.

Kip felt foolish. Like he couldn’t take one step, poke his head in the door himself, and say, “I’ve been summoned.” He opened his mouth to explain himself, remembered Gavin’s orders: Remember who you are.

He was going to apologize, or say please, but he stopped himself.

After another moment of weighing Kip, Grinwoody acquiesced. He rapped on the door and stepped into the classroom. “Luxlord Guile requires Kip’s presence.”

He didn’t give Magister Kadah a chance to respond, though Kip would have given his left eye to see the expression on her face. Grinwoody was a slave, but a slave authorized to do his duty by one of the most powerful men in the world. Nothing the magister said mattered. Grinwoody was a man who remembered who he was.

The real question was, who was Kip? Grinwoody had referred to him only by his first name. It hadn’t been, ‘Luxlord Guile requires his grandson.’

What had Gavin said? ‘We’ll count it a victory if you avoid wetting yourself’?

Kip cleared his throat. “Uh, you mind if we stop by the privies on the way?”





Chapter 13




Gavin smiled as he stepped off the skimmer onto Seers Island. Karris had her ataghan drawn, and was pointing her pistol at the nearest man.

The people stood in an unruly mob, but they were armed with swords and muskets, makeshift spears. There were few commonalities between them: they had come from all seven satrapies, light-skinned and dark, dirty and clean, dressed in silk and wool. Several had an extra eye drawn on their forehead with coal. Though even among those, some had exquisitely drawn, others rough, lopsided.

What these men and women had in common was only this: each one had the religious devotion to cross reefs in a small outrigger canoe to get here, and every one of them was a drafter.