Ironfist was scowling. “Something we don’t teach until a year from now. Kip, who showed you that?”
Kip turned his hands up, helpless.
“Willjacking or will-breaking. Trainer Fisk?”
The muscle-bound teacher stepped forward. “Technically, it’s called forced translucification. Luxin has no memory. There is no your luxin or my luxin. Once a drafter makes physical contact with open luxin of a color that she can draft, she can use it. What just happened here was two drafters fought will to will, and Kip broke Grazner’s will.”
The boy Kip had just defeated said, “But, but, I didn’t know what he was doing!”
The trainer said, “He didn’t know what he was doing either. Did you, Kip?”
“Uh, no, sir.”
“You’re just lucky you weren’t left a blithering idiot, Graz,” Trainer Fisk said.
A boy in the crowd whispered, “Blithering, no. Idiot? Weeelll…”
Several people snickered. A few had the decency to try to cover it with coughs.
“So Adrasteia, you want to challenge Kip?” Ironfist asked.
“Ah hells,” the boy murmured. He was the one who’d made the crack about Grazner.
“Sir, I thought if I won I was done,” Kip said.
“Whatever would make you believe such a thing? The winning is just the beginning.”
Kip swallowed.
Adrasteia didn’t look terribly pleased to be fighting Kip either. Alone of all the fighters, he wasn’t wearing an armband showing what color he drafted.
He had straight, shoulder-length dark hair, bound back with a gold scarf. Skin just dark enough for the Blackguard, with Atashian features and striking blue eyes. Short and slender, but wearing a baggy shirt and baggy pants, he looked maybe thirteen years old. Odd haircut, but then Kip wasn’t exactly a man of the world. Maybe long hair was in fashion now. Strange name, too, and rather full lips.
“Oh! You’re a girl!” Kip said. It just slipped out.
The class hooted. Ironfist rubbed his forehead.
Not trying for an insult, but succeeding. Oops.
“No mercy, chubs,” Adrasteia said. Now he could tell she was his age. Fifteen, maybe sixteen, petite, no curves. Fairly pretty, but no knockout.
He hoped she wasn’t a knockout, anyway.
“Form up,” Trainer Fisk said. “Same rules as before—and no willjacking, but then, that shouldn’t be a problem with you, Teia, should it?”
Adrasteia grimaced toward the trainer, face intense. She turned toward Kip, gave a very perfunctory bow.
Kip bowed back. “Sorry, I didn’t—”
“Save it, Lard Guile,” she said.
Several students laughed aloud.
“Oh, I get it, you’re jealous ’cause I have bigger boobs than you,” Kip said. He covered the stab of self-loathing with a condescending grin.
“I can see you naked,” she said. “And I’m not jealous of that.” She sniffed with distaste at his body.
Huh?
But Kip didn’t have time to think about what she could possibly mean, because she attacked him.
He wasn’t in a ready stance, and he wasn’t ready, period. Especially not for her foot to go from the floor to the side of his head in the blink of an eye.
The flexibility! The grace!
The astonishing feeling of blood flying from his face!
Kip was looking at the world sideways. He was lying down, without having been aware of the whole falling part. As ever when hurt, he did a quick inventory: just how bad was it? Not that bad. He’d bit the hell out of his cheek and tongue, but he’d gone down mostly from the surprise.
Getting your head torn off by a little girl will do that to you.
She came into his view, still in a fighting stance, close to his head. Flat on his back, he asked, “That all you got?”
It enraged her, and she stepped toward him.
He rolled toward her, fast, hoping to catch her feet and trip her.
She jumped, trying to leap over him, but he slowed, grabbed one foot while she was in midair. He got lucky and snagged the inside foot.
Adrasteia clawed, catlike, twisting, but she couldn’t recover. She landed flat on her hip and cried out.
Kip scrambled, trying to pin her—something, anything to use his weight to win somehow.
He was halfway on top of her when her small fist caught him straight in the throat. He coughed, collapsed.
In a moment, he was lying facedown and she was on top of him with her arm around his neck.
An adult was shouting, but Kip could only hear the roar of blood in his ears.
Then Adrasteia disappeared, feet kicking in midair as Ironfist lifted her bodily off him, literally hauling her off by her collar.
Ironfist dropped the furious girl in front of him. “I said, Enough!” he bellowed. Adrasteia was shocked to stillness. Then she wilted. Everyone in the class shrank back, wide-eyed and suddenly quiet. “Kip!” Ironfist roared.
Kip swallowed a few times. “Yes, sir?” he asked, pulling himself to his feet for what felt like the hundredth time of the day.
“All the scrubs have a partner. You just found yours.”
Chapter 17
At dinner, Kip took his food and sat at the end of a long table by himself. You can’t get rejected if you don’t try to fit in.
Adrasteia came over and sat across from him. “I’m supposed to spy on you,” she said.
“Um, good sausage?” Kip said.
“It’s not bad. You should see what the full Blackguards get.”
“Good?” Kip asked.
“Fantastic,” she said. She picked at her food. “I’m serious.”
“You really love food, huh?” Kip asked.
“I meant about the spying, sheep-for-brains.”
“I know.” Sheep for brains? After the time he’d just spent with sailors and soldiers, it was insufferably cute to hear someone swear with euphemisms.
“Oh.” She flushed. Looked down at her food.
“Why does anyone want to spy on me?” Kip asked.
“You’re a Guile.” She shrugged as if that explained everything. Kip supposed it did.
“Who are you spying for?” Kip asked.
“My sponsor, of course.”
“Well, I sort of figured.” Kip had had no idea. “But who’s your sponsor?”
“That’s kind of a personal question, isn’t it?” she said.
“You’re spying on me, but I don’t get to ask slightly personal questions?” Kip asked, incredulous.
She laughed. “It’s not really a personal question, Kip. I was just testing you.”
Oh, and I failed.
“So does that mean you’re going to tell me?” he asked, bullish.
“Tell you what?” Playing dumb.
“You are really impossible, aren’t you?” Kip asked.
She grinned. “Lady Lucretia Verangheti of the Smussato Veranghetis is my sponsor.”
“You’re from Ilyta? You don’t look Ilytian. Plus, I thought the Ilytians don’t like drafting. Heretics and all.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “You just say the first thing that pops into your head, don’t you?”
“I’m getting better,” Kip said. What had he done?
“This is the better?”