to kill? Gavin rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“I’m going to kill men tomorrow, Kip. Men who don’t precisely deserve killing. It’s one thing to kill a wight, or a murderer, or pirates, or a man invading your city or your home, ready to rape and murder and steal. It’s another to kill a merchant whose goods will bring death, but who is himself simply trying to make a living. A man like that has children back home, a wife you’re making a widow, and a destitute one at that.”
“We all pick sides,” Kip said.
“Simple as that?” Gavin asked.
Kip shifted from foot to foot, but nodded.
“We’ve heard from four different spies that Liv Danavis is with the Color Prince now. Part of his army. So tell me, Kip, if we see Liv Danavis on the deck of one of those ships, about to toss a grenado at us, you’ll kill her? Without hesitation, before she can kill us?”
Kip swallowed. “Orholam’s… beard, sir. I… I hope he would defend me from having to make such a choice.”
“If Orholam defended us from such choices, we wouldn’t be here, Kip.”
“How could she go with them, sir? They’re monsters. Literal, real, flesh and luxin monsters.”
“Idealists mature badly. If they can’t outgrow their idealism, they become hypocrites or blind. Liv has chosen blindness, fixating so much on the Chromeria’s flaws that she believes those who oppose us must be paragons. That we’re not perfect says nothing about our enemies, Kip. Nothing. As it turns out, they’re mostly bad. Bad enough that their rule would be a cataclysm, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have some good points about us. It doesn’t mean that every fool who works for them is evil. It simply means they have to be stopped. By killing them, if necessary. That’s the life you’re stepping into here, Kip. I leave tomorrow at dawn. I’ll get permission from your commander for you to join me, but if you can’t kill Liv if you need to, don’t show up. I won’t hold it against you as a man, but as a soldier, I won’t want you covering my back either.”
Kip didn’t answer immediately, and Gavin respected him the more for it.
“Thank you, sir,” Kip said eventually. “I don’t like it, but I appreciate your honesty.”
Honesty? When I tell the truth about this and lie about all else? Appreciate something else, boy. I’m a liar to the core.
Chapter 98
Dawn found Kip on the deck, waiting for his father. It was cold and the seas were choppy, but his Blackguard’s runt clothes were warm enough. At least when combined with his fat. He pulled the gray cloak around himself, stamping his feet. He hadn’t gotten much sleep. The idea of killing Liv-or of being killed by her-had kept him from that.
But Liv had made her choices. She’d believed the lies she wanted to believe. She’d gone over to the side of madmen. How could she be so stupid?
Maybe Kip hadn’t known her at all.
The thought made him sick to his stomach. He thought of her smile. Her laugh when she’d made him think the walkway between the towers was snapping, the fine curves of her body as she’d walked in front of him.
The knot in his stomach eased when he saw his father come out of his room onto the deck, already speaking with Commander Ironfist.
The commander was in the lead, speaking over his shoulder. “Do you know what your wife will do to me if I let anything happen to you?” he asked.
“Wife?” Kip asked.
Commander Ironfist scowled quickly. “My apologies, my lord, I didn’t-”
“It’s not a secret, Commander,” Gavin said smoothly. “I married Karris before we left, Kip.”
“You wha-Oh, oh,” Kip said. Clearly that relationship had been a little different than Kip had thought in the little slivers of it he’d seen. Which had included curses and slapping and jumping off a boat rather than be near Gavin. Kip closed his mouth, then realized not saying anything might look like he was passing judgment. He couldn’t help but feel left out. That he hadn’t deserved to hear about it right away, that his father was still holding out on him. “Uh, congratulations, sir?”
“Why thank you, Kip. And I’m very glad to see you this morning. I’ve asked you to fight not as a boy, but as a man, and you’ve responded. And I can tell you haven’t slept, so you’ve responded appropriately. Well done, son.”
Well done, son. The words were what Kip had ached to hear for his whole life, and doubly so since learning Gavin Guile was his father. But they were delivered perfunctorily, as if Gavin were checking items off a list, without emotion, without attention.
“Now, as we go this morning,” Gavin said, “I want you to tell me about the assassination attempt.”
Kip hadn’t really thought of what happened in the alley that way, but Gavin said it so blithely that Kip knew he had to be right. Lucia had died because of Kip. Had stepped into the line of fire. It was, oddly, exactly what Blackguards were supposed to do, but she’d done it on accident. Kip wasn’t sure if that made it better, or worse.
They walked to the stern and Kip saw that they weren’t going alone. At the bottom of a pair of rope ladders, a dozen Blackguards stood on a skimmer the likes of which Kip had never seen. It was, of course, bigger so that it could hold seventeen of them, but it was also shaped differently, like a large flying wing, with eight scoops. Every Blackguard was armed with a bow and a large quiver and bandoliers of grenadoes. Some had spare spectacles. From there, each was armed according to his fancy and expertise. A couple had bucklers. One carried a notched sword-breaker. Most had a pistol. One had a bich’hwa like Karris often carried. And others had the forward-bent ataghans or the sweeping scimitars. The skimmer itself had grapnels and ropes aplenty.
Plus, every Blackguard was himself a considerable weapon.
Kip’s awe and hesitancy must have shown on his face, because Gavin said, “Kip, you can’t become who you need to be if I’m not willing to risk losing you. You still want to come?”
Cruxer was down there. Cruxer was coming! He saw Kip and lifted his chin in greeting. He looked pretty excited that he was being allowed to come.
It pained Kip to say it, but he said, “I don’t bring much to the table, sir.”
“Not yet. But you’re about to learn from the best.”
They climbed down the ladder and onto the huge skimmer. Gavin began giving the Blackguards instructions. “Biggest risk is you’ll tear your arms off. You can’t go from a standstill to full speed in a breath. If you have the skill, you can narrow the pipes at first. The luxin needn’t be focused. This is one place you can be sloppy, whatever is the easiest band for you to draft will work.” He continued, while Kip settled into his place.
They released the ropes holding the skimmer to the galleon and Gavin and Ironfist manned the pipes on the main platform, and soon Kip heard the familiar whoop, whoop, whoop. Soon, half of the other Blackguards joined in, while Gavin and Ironfist gave instructions, and thenceforth the men and women spoke back and forth to each other, giving tips and hints.
Gavin taught them how to do turns and showed how sharply they could do it. And Kip saw the same look of delight steal over the Blackguards’ faces that had crept over his own the first time he’d experienced the wind and waves and the sheer, unbelievable speed.
Then, when things settled down, Kip told his father the whole story of the assassination attempt as they sped across the waves. This skimmer was modified to enclose the front, so the wind didn’t obliterate their conversations.
“This… this is different than the skimmer before,” Kip said. “Didn’t you just make this up a little while ago?”
Gavin shrugged. “War always moves forward, and if you’re not at the leading edge of what’s possible, you might not live long enough to regret it.”
They saw many ships, but didn’t close with any of them until after noon. Gavin stopped, motioning to Ironfist to do the same, and peered at the horizon. He brought out a large glass binocle, which was odd. The last time he’d needed to see into the distance, he’d simply drafted disks of perfect blue luxin. Maybe the clarity of this glass was
