The rest of the squad was standing there waiting for them in the reception area. All of them were wearing their grays. All of them were armed, but there was no tension in the air. They were curious why they’d been summoned.
“Hey, Breaker!” Ferkudi said. “What’s happening? What’s the game? Where’s Teia?”
Cruxer, though, saw the look on Kip’s face immediately. He stepped close. “The Guile room slave sent us here. Told us to be armed. Said that you and Teia would meet us. What’s—”
Kip glanced around. Teia was gone.
Oh, not gone. Just not visible. Keeping her presence secret. Fair enough.
“No time,” he said, walking past Cruxer.
Three Lightguards stood at the usual Blackguard post. They were standing side by side, fully blocking the hall. Ten paces behind them, the Blackguards waited, looking peeved about having been evicted, but clearly under orders not to do anything about it.
Kip stood up on tiptoe briefly as he walked toward the checkpoint to see which Blackguards were on duty. He squinted and drew his green spectacles smoothly from his hip case. “Gav Greyling? Is that you?”
Big Leo whispered behind him, “Boom.”
“Ayup!” Gavin Greyling said.
“What’s your orders?” Kip said, again bobbing up on tiptoe like a little kid to look past the Lightguards.
“Son, you’re going to have to hold up,” one of the Lightguards said.
“Not to interfere with the Lightguards. Not in any way,” Gav announced.
“Boom?” Ferkudi asked, confused.
“Son, I mean—”
“Oh,” Kip said to Gavin Greyling, “that’s—” He was close enough. Amateurs.
Forearm strike to the neck. Kip caught the man on the left so hard, right under his jawline, that the man was launched into the wall. Kip used the follow-through to build torsion through his core. He whipped back to smash his elbow into the noseguard of the middle guard’s helmet. The man hadn’t bothered to tie his chinstrap, so his noseguard became the metal vanguard of Kip’s attack. The man flopped into the third guard, already unconscious.
His collision knocked the spear from the third man’s grasp. The Lightguard went for a belt knife. It was a cross-body grab, and Kip blocked him from drawing it, first grabbing the man’s wrist, and then wrapping green luxin around the man’s wrist, hand, and belt, chaining them together.
The man tugged frantically, fighting his own belt. Kip was already grabbing him by the throat in one hand. He brought up his other fist and made thorny spikes sprout from it. But didn’t punch.
All the fight went out of the last Lightguard.
“Lie down and pretend to be unconscious,” Kip said.
The man nodded quickly, wide-eyed.
Kip let go of him, and the man knelt and awkwardly lowered himself onto the ground with only one hand.
“Oh!” Ferkudi exclaimed, getting it. “Boom!”
“Hanging hairies, Ferkudi,” Big Leo said, “sometimes I think you have got to be faking it.”
“Faking what?” Ferkudi asked.
“Hold the hall,” Kip told Cruxer.
“We got it,” Cruxer said.
The squad rapidly gathered the Lightguards’ weapons. The full Blackguards, Gavin Greyling and the shaven-headed Asif, were grinning at how Kip had dispatched the Lightguard, but they still barred the way.
“I’ve no doubt you’re going to pay for that, nunk, but it sure was fun to watch,” Gavin said.
“The White’s in danger,” Kip said. “Something only … something only I can see.”
And like that, the men were on alert. They went straight past the guards at the door. Kip stopped at the White’s door for a moment and looked back, as if pensive, to give Teia a chance to sneak in.
Winsen crouched over the third Lightguard. “Hey, friend,” he said. “No need to pretend.”
“Huh?” the guard asked, opening his eyes.
Winsen’s fist cracked across his jaw. The guard’s head bounced off the ground. Kip winced. Winsen saw him looking. He grinned, but there was always something a little cool about even his friendliness. He enjoyed this, and he liked Kip, but he didn’t quite like people the way other people did.
Kip nodded to him and went in.
“Hold the door,” Kip said to the Blackguards, “and please don’t look?”
They pursed their lips, but Gavin Greyling nodded. Kip pulled a curtain as he approached.
Teia was already standing at the foot of the White’s bed, her eyes black orbs in the low light of the room. It was dark outside, and Kip could see only pinpricks of light out her windows, the lamps of the rich people’s homes and the lamps of the rich people’s streets, tapering off into darkness on the poorer north side.