She’d said that her paintings had to be true, but Kip didn’t know that to be true. Even if her paintings had to be true, that didn’t mean her words did. She could easily have been lying, or just wrong. Even if she was right, and Gavin was wrong, she hadn’t painted the Lightbringer. Maybe she wouldn’t have been able to. Or maybe it would have been too obscure to tell anything. Even then, she’d said that sometimes her paintings weren’t literal.
Kip followed Gavin out of the Blackguard barracks. A man and a woman Blackguard fell in behind them, natural and unobtrusive. Kip wondered how they did that. Long practice, he supposed. Just like everything in the Blackguards’ lives.
Maybe that was why being a Blackguard appealed so much to him. Everything they got was earned. Not like Kip’s life. They didn’t care whose son he was, they cared if he could do the work.
Gavin set the weights in the lift—Kip had never really noticed it before, but though the Blackguards guarded Gavin’s life, they weren’t servants. Kip wondered if that was because Gavin had established that he wanted to do things for himself, or if the Blackguards simply refused to do more than protect him. They headed up, surprising Kip, who thought Gavin would make him go back to his own room.
They were deposited on the top floor. Gavin’s and the White’s floor.
“So your grandfather gave you trouble?” Gavin asked.
“Sir,” Kip said. “Your father… um, he’s denied me, sir. You know, denied that I’m your son.” Kip swallowed. Of course he knows what it means, moron. “That’s what I meant when I said I failed.”
“Really?” Gavin said. “This is going to be fun, isn’t it?” There was no mirth in his tone. He turned to one of the Blackguards, a lanky Ilytian with a crooked smile. “Lytos, this is my son, Kip. Kip is my son.”
“Yes, sir,” the man said. He had a strangely high voice. “I understand.” Oh, a eunuch. Kip had heard that some Ilytians believed eunuchs were better drafters than boys. His teachers had ridiculed the idea, though: cutting a man’s balls off doesn’t change his eyes, she’d said. Cutting off one end of a man doesn’t change the other. On the other hand, it did obviously change a man’s voice, so maybe the idea wasn’t that ludicrous. Or maybe it kept a man’s voice from changing, which obviously wasn’t the same thing. Unless there was something about puberty that also changed a man’s eyes—maybe imperceptibly, but enough to skew men’s color vision and make their magic fail more often than women’s.
Again, the problem was that you couldn’t tell what exact tones another person perceived, so everyone made the best guess they could. And apparently some people were confident enough in their guesses to cut off a child’s testicles.
Kip was living in a mad world, among people who were happy to do worse than he could dream. He shivered.
Gavin looked at him, and understood. He touched Kip’s shoulder briefly.
Lytos peeled off as they walked through the security checkpoint and spoke to the officer in charge. Not five seconds later, Lytos was walking quickly to catch up with Gavin and Kip. Another Blackguard—Kip’s Blackguard, he supposed—was with him. Samite. Kip was glad to see her again. He hadn’t seen her much since the day he’d first arrived. He grinned at her. She simply raised an eyebrow.
They walked to Gavin’s room, went inside. Gavin beckoned Kip to follow him. Like a particularly squat shadow, Samite followed Kip in and took her place behind the door. She was Kip’s bodyguard now, and that meant guarding him even in Gavin’s room. Even from Gavin, if it came to that?
A mad world.
The big, open room was spotlessly clean and as beautiful as the last time Kip had been here. But now he knew a lot more about drafting than the first time he’d been here. Knowing more, he was more impressed. There were hellstone panels in the walls that you could hit with superviolet luxin to control the windows and the artificial lights above. There was sub-red luxin woven through the floors and the ceiling to keep the room warm, counteracting the chill that invaded through the dozens of floor-to-ceiling windows.
But before Kip could marvel at the workmanship and luxury even of the windows themselves, he saw Marissia, Gavin’s room slave. She must have had warning that Gavin was coming, because she was wearing finer clothing than Kip had ever seen her in before. He supposed that the gray color technically was in obedience to the sumptuary laws, and her hair was carefully kept free of her ears to show where they had been snipped vertically and cauterized in the Ruthgari style, but she looked astoundingly good. But the fitted cut and her lean curves hit Kip more like the background roar of ocean waves crashing to shore. He was arrested by the look on her face. She took a steadying breath, desperate for approval, eager for favor, eyes only for Gavin.
Kip had seen dozens, hundreds of people look at his father with adoration in their gazes. He’d seen people look at him with veneration in their gazes. This was love.
As fast as if he were trying to follow a cannonball in flight, Kip looked over to Gavin’s face.
The Prism was obviously pleased. He smiled widely, and Kip saw his father’s eyes sweep over Marissia’s body appreciatively.
Ew. That’s my father. Looking at a woman like—
Kip didn’t want to think about it. He looked away.
“Marissia,” Gavin said.
Marissia hurried over and knelt at Gavin’s feet. She kissed his hand. “My lord.”
Kip couldn’t help but look back at them.
“You’ve been crying,” Gavin said.
“Yes, my lord. I have much to tell you.” She glanced over at Kip. Ah, in private.
Gavin handed Kip the cloaks and the card box. He walked to a closet, rummaged for something.
Kip cleared his throat awkwardly and walked over to one side of the room where there was a table and chairs. Marissia had already risen by the time Kip sat, and was speaking quickly to Gavin, with her hand to the side of her mouth, in case Kip was a lip-reader, he guessed.
These people know what they’re doing, and they’re playing for keeps. Kip felt the familiar sinking feeling. He was so far out of his depth all he could do was flail.
“No!” she said, her voice rising just enough for Kip to hear it. “No alarms. I’m certain—” She lowered her voice again.
Gavin asked several quick, sharp questions, heard the low answers, then nodded a few times. There was a knock on the door. Gavin appeared to curse. “Yes?” he said.
The door cracked open. Kip couldn’t see who it was, and Gavin made a very subtle gesture to him to stay where he was. Always keeping secrets, his father. Not letting anyone know anything that might endanger them all. Samite, blocked from sight as she was by the open door, remained silent, unseen.
“Gavin,” an older woman’s voice said. “I was hoping you might accompany me downstairs. It is your business that will be before the Spectrum, after all, but I’d enjoy a word first.”
The White. Gavin was talking to the White. Kip swallowed again.
“Of course,” Gavin said.
He turned around and addressed Marissia, but Kip could tell that he was really talking to him. “I’ll be back in an hour. Stay out of trouble.”
Marissia curtsied deeply. She knew when to play along. Gavin nonchalantly tossed something onto his bed, flicked his eyes to Kip to let him know it was for him, and then left.