The Blinding Knife(285)

“In the boat. Food, too.”

Kip stood with difficulty. The young man didn’t help him up. Then it hit him. He knew that voice. He squinted against the brightness. “Oh no,” he said.

“Bit slow, aren’t ya?” Zymun said. He stepped forward and punched Kip in the face.

Kip fell and sat heavily in the sand. He checked his nose, eyes streaming. On the bright side, it wasn’t broken. He stood slowly, walked over to the dinghy. He halfway emptied the skin. He had a headache that he thought was a hangover. He hadn’t had one of those before. Plus he was lightsick. Every part of his body hurt. He had a gash along his ribs and his left arm was throbbing from being stabbed.

Kip considered attacking Zymun, who was rubbing his hand: punching Kip had hurt his fist. But Zymun had a gun. He would see if Kip tried to draft—which right now sounded as appetizing as gargling sewage—and Kip was feeling about as agile as a hundred-and-twelve-year-old man. Kip had seen the boy draft, long ago. He had no doubt that Zymun had the will to use that pistol. He got in the boat.

“Take off that belt and give it to me. Then tear off a strip of your shirt and tie it around your eyes,” Zymun said. “Slowly.”

Kip did both. He felt Zymun push the dinghy into the water. Kip lunged forward, tearing off his blindfold.

Zymun was clinging to the prow with one hand, bobbing in the water, halfway to climbing into the boat, and he had the pistol leveled at Kip’s face. “Back. Back!” he said. “I can’t hold on here for long, so if you’re not seated and blindfolded in five seconds, I’m going to put a bullet in your face.”

Settling back onto his bench, Kip pulled the blindfold back up, defeated. He’d almost done it. Almost. The cloak of failure draped easily around his slumped shoulders. Kip Almost. Again.

No. That wasn’t true. He wasn’t that Kip anymore. He wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t weak. He wasn’t a coward. He wasn’t rejected.

He had gotten into the Blackguard. He had been accepted by the best drafters and fighters in the world. He had been accepted by his father. He had fought a king and wights and a god. He’d made huge mistakes: he’d been stupid and weak and cowardly and rejected. Without him, his father wouldn’t have been stabbed. But he also had pulled his father from the waves, had saved his life when no one else could. Kip had donned Almost as his spectacles. There was a middle path, a golden mean between the whore’s son and the Prism’s. He wasn’t really Kip Godslayer, but he also wasn’t the boy who’d knuckled under to Ramir. Not anymore. I am what I do, and I am Breaker.

He who looks through only one lens lives in darkness. He who has ears, let him hear.

It’s time for me to break that old lens.

“Take the oars,” Zymun said. As Kip reached blindly for them, he heard Zymun slip into the boat. Then he felt luxin encase his hands, locking them around the oars. “You row for an hour, and then I’ll give you food and more water. Go on! We got a long way to go, brother.”

Kip started rowing. His left arm did not appreciate it. “Brother?” he asked. His voice came out calm, unafraid, unashamed.

“My grandfather Andross Guile’s summoned me to the Chromeria. He said the rest of his family hadn’t turned out. Said he’s considering adopting me. Said he has big plans.” He paused. “What, didn’t you know? I’m Karris and Gavin’s son. I’m Zymun White Oak.”

Kip’s heart dropped out of his chest, punched a hole in the deck, and killed a dozen fish on its way to the sea floor.

He heard a metallic scrape of the pistol being examined, and he thought that maybe Zymun had decided to kill him after all. Then Zymun barked a laugh. “Holy fuck am I lucky,” he said to himself. “Would you look at that? This gun wasn’t even loaded.”





Chapter 115




Gavin woke to someone slapping his face. He felt awful. The cabin was dark and stank of men who hadn’t washed in ages and bilgewater and seaweed and fish and human waste. There were manacles on his wrists, and he was naked except for a breechclout.

Another slap cracked across his cheek, hard enough to put the taste of blood in his mouth. He opened his eyes. He looked at the man in front of him. His lungs and throat felt raw from the seawater he’d tried to breathe.

“Gunner, you son of a bitch,” Gavin said. His voice was raw, too. Last night was a dim memory. “What are you doing?”

“Can’t draft, can ya?”

Gavin held up his hands, empty, helpless. It was so dim in the cabin it would take him a couple of minutes to draft enough to be a threat to anyone. And summoning the will would be a problem, too, with how terrible he felt.