“I will.” Kip felt little shivers.
“And will you forswear other loyalties, and have loyalty first to this body, to Orholam, and to his Prism?”
“I will.”
“Then I declare you, Breaker, a trainee in the Blackguard.”
“Break-er! Break-er!” the crowd chanted.
Ironfist let them go on for a few more seconds, then quieted them and worked his way down the line.
The rest of the ceremony passed like a dream. Each scrub was sworn in, and then the older trainees and the full Blackguards gathered around them to congratulate them.
They eventually decided to go to a tavern that the Blackguards preferred—all drinks on the new trainees, of course. Before he let himself be swept out into the evening, Kip looked for his father.
Gavin Guile was standing where Kip had left him, ignoring for the moment a messenger who’d come to him with something or other. He had eyes only for Kip. The Prism wore a bemused smirk, but maybe it was more than bemused. Maybe it was a little proud.
Chapter 93
Karris was dimly aware of the men leaving. She laid her face on the paving stones, praying they wouldn’t come back, hoping for unconsciousness. It didn’t come. She lifted her face and saw a pool of blood where her mouth had been. Her left eye was rapidly swelling shut, and the right doing the same, more slowly.
She felt sick from the blow to her head. There was a foul taste in her mouth along with the flat metal taste of blood. She realized they’d rolled her onto her side so she wouldn’t drown on her own vomit.
Messily, she vomited again. She got it all over herself, but the spasms in her stomach kept her curled into a ball. She was heaving just to breathe, and heaving her guts up.
The spasms passed slowly, but her head still felt barely connected to her body, moving at its own pace, sloshing. She rolled onto her stomach again and somehow started crawling.
She could crawl. Good. Part of her noted that she hadn’t broken either her arms or legs. Good, good. Her hands were slick with blood and worse, and the paving stones cut her knees. Her ribs ached every time she took a breath, but if any ribs were broken, they were merely cracked. She’d had broken ribs before, and that hurt worse than this.
Unless, of course, her body was masking the pain. Bodies did that. Damned things. Something caught in her throat and she spat up blood.
Still had her teeth, but she’d bit the hell out of her tongue. Something was burning around her neck. She was afraid to touch it, though. Couldn’t, and still crawl.
She reached the intersection five or ten minutes, or a year, later.
What street was this? She’d just come down it, but she couldn’t remember. Couldn’t remember what part of town she was in. Not a busy street, though.
But she couldn’t go any farther. Her right eye was completely shut now. She realized her butt hurt. They’d kicked the hell out of her butt. And her legs were starting to cramp up.
She retched again. Dry-heaved.
When she opened her one good eye, she saw someone walking toward her down the street.
The man turned aside and walked wide around her.
Others passed. Men, and women. A man with a cart. None stopped. Orholam, why didn’t any of them stop?
Helpless. She might as well be naked out here. She couldn’t do anything. At the mercy of anyone who passed. Anyone who wanted to take advantage.
She started crying, and hated herself for it. Everything just hurt so bad.
“Come now, sweetie,” a man said over her. “Everything’s going to be fine. Such a brave girl you are.” Sounded Ilytian, by the accent. Karris hadn’t had good luck with Ilytians. Didn’t think much of them. “Dressed as a Blackguard, but white as a sail. You’re Karris White Oak.”
She couldn’t answer. Stopping crying was all she could manage. Nodding her head was a victory.
“I’m going to pick you up. I want you to think about everywhere you hurt so we can tell the chirurgeons when we get to the Chromeria. Acceptable?”
“Y-yes.” Something about him seemed familiar. But no, she was certain—
He picked her up, and she promptly passed out.
When she woke, she was in a bed. She could tell she’d been dosed with poppy, because she felt far too good. She heaved her head left, saw the world swim, and then heaved it right.
Gavin’s room! Ha! She’d been here before. And oh-ho! There was the man himself, the Light of the Tower, the Star of Stars, the Moon’s Right Hand. He was awfully handsome, standing there, that one wave of his hair falling in front of his eyes.
“Karris?” Gavin asked. He looked terribly concerned. “Can you hear me?”
“Mmm,” she said. She smiled at him. She remembered seeing him without his shirt on at Seers Island. Mmm. “I want to see you naked,” she said.
Oh dear! Had she really just said that? She laughed.
Gavin turned to a little man Karris hadn’t noticed before. A chirurgeon in slave’s robes. “I think we can ease up on the poppy,” he said.
“Always trying to tell me…” Karris lost the thought. And consciousness.
Chapter 94
Tell her. You have to tell her.
Gavin rolled the little brown ball of opium between his finger and thumb. Karris was still asleep, and the people were scurrying every which way in the hall outside, preparing for war.
When the messenger had come to him at Kip’s testing, Gavin had at first refused to understand the man’s words, then nearly panicked. That Karris had been beaten had affected him far more than he would have expected.
“Look to what you love,” his father had said.
They’d sail at high tide tomorrow. The mobilization was unbelievably fast because everyone had known that when the permission came, they would have to move fast. What was transpiring now was simply the last-minute orders. Still, there were a thousand decisions to be made. And though Gavin wasn’t technically part of them, he still knew more than anyone here how to successfully put together an armada and an army.
But for now, he sat at Karris’s bedside. When he’d first seen her, caked with blood, he’d thought she would be crippled by her injuries. Then, after the chirurgeons had tended to her and reported, he’d thought it was a miracle she wasn’t hurt worse. Now he realized she’d been beaten expertly and exactly how much whoever did it had intended. She’d been meant to look awful—without incapacitating her permanently. It had been intended as a warning to Gavin, not a declaration of war.
His father had no idea.
He didn’t have any proof it had been his father, of course. There were any number of possible suspects, but with this timing, this care, this precision? Gavin didn’t need proof.
Seeing her on the bed, wrapped in bandages, unconscious, Gavin was made aware of how small she was. When she was awake, talking, her personality was so big you forgot. But here, she looked so vulnerable, a delicate flower, bruised.
“I’m going to rip their damn arms off. I swear it,” Gavin said quietly.
“You talking to yourself, or am I that bad of a faker?” Karris asked, cracking one eye. The other opened a bare slit through the swollen blackness.
“You’re back,” Gavin said. His relief was like a crushing weight lifting.
“Did I… say something…” She trailed off.