He didn’t understand. There had to be some angle, some advantage. It was all she had. It was her last five minutes, whereas to him it would just be another grain in a full hourglass.
There was no angle. There was no deceit in her open eyes. He stared at her for ten seconds, thirty. And then he was furious for no reason he could understand.
And then he broke.
And he wept.
And she held him. And they wept together.
And after five minutes, the accursed bell jingled. And he stood. And he begged her forgiveness. And he kissed her lips.
And he slew her.
And with her died his faith in Orholam. It had survived war and abandonment and massacres and deceit, but it could not survive the holiest night of the year.
It was midnight. He had killed one hundred drafters.
Three hundred and twenty-seven to go.
Thirty hours later, Gavin killed the last man just before the sun rose. And he went to his chambers, and for the first time since he’d brought hell to earth, he drafted black luxin.
Chapter 25
Kip took the lift down to head out to the Blackguards’ training yard, but when he got to the ground floor, he couldn’t force himself to get out. He was overwhelmed with people, with having just faced down his grandfather. He was trembling.
He’d figured out in his weeks coming back to the Chromeria that with both Kip and Gavin being lost to the waves, the Red wasn’t going to let the blame for it land on his own shoulders. Nor would he be deprived of the services of his favorite slave, Grinwoody. That meant whatever story he’d invented blamed Kip.
Knowing he would have to answer for the crime he had tried to prevent, Kip had prepared as well as he could, charting a course whereby he might find some rapprochement with the man who’d probably accused him of murder and treason.
When he got off the boat, he’d asked the first person he’d seen what had happened to Gavin.
Regardless, going into that meeting should have been the prelude to imprisonment and execution. Kip still wasn’t sure why it hadn’t been. Part of what he’d been betting on was that Andross was a wight. And he wasn’t. Not anymore.
Andross still wore his hood. Still wore his dark spectacles, but Kip had known, instantly. There was something different about his voice, and he hadn’t been wearing gloves.
Kip’s best card had suddenly disappeared. He’d planned to threaten to reveal that. If nothing else, before they took him away to prison, he could yank back Andross Guile’s hood to show the man for what he was.
In the chamber, Kip hadn’t had a moment to think about the further implications: a man had gone wight, and was now a wight no longer? Impossible.
Kip had merely spoken, weaving lies with a facility he didn’t know he had, so befuddled and intrigued by the puzzle that he’d forgotten to be befuddled and overwhelmed by addressing the entire Spectrum.
And it had worked. Somehow.
There had been a little spark of joy dancing at the corner of Andross Guile’s mouth. Surprise, but then pleasure. Like he enjoyed playing against a worthy opponent. Maybe that was why he’d let Kip off the hook, simply so they could keep playing.
Kip felt suddenly ill. He was alive because of Andross Guile’s mercy? No, not that. He was alive because Andross longed for entertainment. There. That was more in line with the old horror. That made sense.
But now, suddenly, the people he should most want to see—his Blackguard compatriots—he couldn’t bear to see, and he couldn’t have even said why. He took the lift down, and down. He got off at the level where the Prism had his private training room. Kip had lost the key Commander Ironfist gave him long ago, but the door had a superviolet panel next to it. Kip had never really noticed them before—they were flat black, and only a few thumbs wide. He’d dismissed them, not realizing what they were, but he realized they were made of the same stuff as the Prism’s room controls.
After gathering some superviolet, Kip extended it into the panel. Ah, there was another lock inside, so that the door could be locked against superviolets as well, but it wasn’t locked now. Kip pressed superviolet in, and the mundane lock popped open. He went inside.
The silence was a balm. He wrapped his hands in long strips of cloth the way Ironfist had taught him. The old widow Coreen had given him clothes, and while they weren’t exactly good for exercise, Kip knew that they would be replaced soon with Blackguard garb and a Chromeria discipulus’s clothes, so he set to work on the heavy bag.
He started slow. Seven to ten minutes, Ironfist said, to warm up your fists and joints to the shock of hitting. Kip bent his wrist on an errant punch. He grumbled. He’d done the wrappings wrong. But instead of untying the whole mess and trying again, he drafted a green luxin brace around his wrist. Then he went ahead and made a full glove out of it. He matched it on the other hand.