The Broken Eye(299)

Perhaps to Andross it was subtler but also simpler: he wanted to win. He didn’t care if everyone knew about his winning; those who mattered would know. He didn’t care about anyone else: who is flattered by the praise of insects? Becoming an emperor in name was unnecessary. If one can wield imperial power, if one can make one’s name synonymous with emperor, was that not the greater achievement?

And when Kip thought of it that way, at least one more fact bared its teeth: Kip’s status as an apparent enemy of Andross Guile wouldn’t necessarily in the fullness of time be discarded. If, after seven years, Andross had other cards better than Kip to play, he might destroy Kip rather than reward him.

And that is the deal for me. Take it or reject it. Eyes open.

And yet … doing what Andross Guile wanted? Everything in Kip rebelled against that.

But whereas Kip might have blithely risked destroying himself in the past, now his actions would affect people he cared about. This wasn’t a matter of right and wrong, but of smart and stupid.

There was nothing to gain by defying Andross Guile, and no way to win if Kip did so. Why then was it so hard?

“Just thinking about my grandfather,” Kip said, finally answering Tisis. “He’s not a good man to make an enemy.”

“But he’s not a good friend, either, is he?” Tisis asked.

“He doesn’t have friends.”

“I know,” she said. “I’ve been caught in his schemes twice, and each time, I’ve come away hating myself almost as much as I hate him.”

“He has that effect,” Kip said. “But … how do I know that putting myself in your sister’s hands won’t be just as big a mistake? Andross may be here, but so are my friends, what few of them I have, anyway.”

“My sister will know I made the best move in a bad situation—but even if she doesn’t, she’s my sister. She loves me, and she’d never turn her back on me.”

Must be nice.

Kip had that kind of friendship, with the squad. But it was already slipping away. Whatever he did, they were passing inexorably from his life.

The one good thing I have is fading already.

“Let’s do it,” Kip said. He looked at her, looked down at his shoes, looked back up at her. “Uh, how do we do it?”

“It’s too late in the day now. It’ll have to be done at dawn. We’ll meet a luxiat I know at the little temple across from the Crossroads. You know it?”

“I know the Crossroads. It was the old Tyrean embassy. It’ll be enough to find the temple. Wouldn’t it make more sense to go now, and have the ship captain marry us?”

“Yes, but no,” she said. “I need the marriage on the books, official, here, with witnesses, by a luxiat in good standing, otherwise your grandfather might have it annulled.”

“Smart,” Kip said. And it was. Maybe she was smarter than he’d thought.

What a terrible thing to think about your future wife.

She brightened. “Thank you.”

“It—”

“No, really. Thank you. To have my intelligence praised by a Guile? That’s not something we mere mortals often get. I mean, I saw you standing there, thinking, when I asked you that question. You were probably seven forks down a winding road in your mind, weren’t you?”

“Uh. Yes?” Kip asked. He wasn’t sure why it came out as a question. Probably because he was receiving the admiration of a woman. Not used to that. Wow, she was pretty.

Tisis said, “I’ve spent weeks thinking about all this—and trying not to think about it—and I tell you, and you figure it out in minutes. It’d be vexing if it weren’t so impressive. And not only impressive. It’s almost as attractive as these are.” She stepped forward and reached out to lay gentle hands on each of his shoulders. “Can I say that? Or do you think me too forward?”

He knew his shoulders were wide—that was just a function of his bone structure, right? He came from a line of broad-shouldered men. But he hadn’t really thought of them as ‘broad’ in the way that people say ‘a broad-shouldered man’ and mean it as a compliment. Kip was just big. Right? But to have her hands on his shoulders, he couldn’t not be aware of the muscles there, and that she thought he did have broad shoulders in the way that people referred to broad-shouldered men and meant it as a compliment. He felt like his brain was smoking, he was thinking so fast. Wait, she thought his shoulders were attractive?

He hadn’t thought of his shoulders more than three times in his life, maybe. And those had been when he was trying to share a bench in chapel and there wasn’t room to sit next to the other wide-shouldered Blackguard initiates. She thought his shoulders were attractive?