The Blinding Knife (101 page)

The wiry old man dropped to his knees, surprised, and Kip kicked him in the chest, sending him flying, tumbling down the steep stairs to the ship’s waist.

Kip charged Andross Guile to tear off his hood and spectacles, to show Gavin what Kip was certain of. He was almost on top of the old man when he saw the knife Andross drew.

It was too late to stop. The old man jabbed the small blade straight at Kip’s stomach. Kip swept it aside and crunched into the old man and into Gavin, who’d stepped in to intervene.

Kip tore the old man’s hood back and felt the knife cut along his ribs. Andross Guile was spitting fury, deep in the grip of red, attacking as fast as he could, determined to kill. He grabbed Kip’s tunic with one hand.

It was a tangle of limbs. Gavin was trying to knock Andross Guile’s attacks aside so he didn’t skewer Kip. Kip landed a punch on Andross’s face, then couldn’t reach him as Gavin wedged his shoulder in front of Kip’s right arm. Another stab got through, piercing Kip’s left arm.

Andross Guile’s spectacles, knocked askew by Kip’s punch, now fell off as the fury raged through him. He attacked like a madman. Gavin drove him back until all three hit the railing.

A whistle was screeching, sailors were screaming, the muffled percussion of Blackguards’ boots coming up steps from the cabins belowdecks. They’d never make it in time. Kip only saw Andross Guile’s eyes—the halos broken, red throughout. A red wight.

Kip didn’t even remember drawing his own knife. Didn’t know how it had gotten into his hand. Letting Gavin get between himself and Andross Guile, he swung his right hand out behind and around his father and stabbed the old bastard. He caught him in the meat of the shoulder.

The old man’s eyes lit up. He screamed.

Something cracked across the back of Kip’s head and the weight of another body joining the fray crushed them all against the railing. When Kip turned, he saw it was Grinwoody. Grinwoody, old but Blackguard trained. Two bare knives were in the middle of the circle between eight grasping hands. The tangle of limbs became a momentary deadlock.

Kip’s knife was the longer by far, and while he was trying to keep Andross from stabbing him with the smaller knife, both Grinwoody and Gavin looked to the longer blade at the same time. It was in a bad position. Kip was straining it toward Andross, but if someone pushed it up and twisted instead—Kip had no leverage to stop from impaling himself.

In a split second, Gavin’s eyes flicked up to Kip’s. Kip saw that his father had the same thought—but then the desperation in Gavin’s
eyes was replaced by an odd calm. A decision reached. A choice made. Peace.

A flurry of motion as both Grinwoody and Gavin released their holds at the same time. Grinwoody’s hands got there first, and Kip’s knife shot up, straight at his chest—only to be diverted at the last second by Gavin’s pull. Pulling the knife into his own chest.

Everyone stopped fighting, but not all simultaneously. Kip staggered backward, horrified. His release of the dagger meant Andross Guile’s force was unopposed. The dagger slammed all the way to the hilt in his son’s chest.

Gavin’s mouth opened in a silent scream and even Andross drew back, aghast. Gavin sagged against the railing. Then his eyes widened, and widened again, as if something new was hurting him. And so it was. The dagger was
growing
.

Andross Guile didn’t see it. He was pulling his cowl back over his face and picking up his spectacles. When he turned and saw a full-length sword through his son, he merely said, “The Blinder’s Knife. Excellent. Grinwoody, retrieve it.” Whatever momentary humanity had afflicted him, it was gone now.

Gavin’s face was a study of pain and betrayal. He was dying, and his own father was only worried about a knife.

Kip was rooted in place. His father had saved him, had sacrificed himself—for Kip. It was so fast, he didn’t know whether to attack Andross again or go to his father. It wouldn’t make any difference now, anyway.

Gavin pushed himself up on the railing that had been supporting him, tried to speak, but couldn’t. He glanced at Kip as if in apology, in farewell, then pushed himself over the edge.

He splashed into the water in the darkness and was lost. The ship was still under sail, a firm breeze helping them speed along steadily. The first young Blackguards reached the stern castle, spread out, bewildered, the sailors shouting, Grinwoody shouting and pointing in the wrong direction, distracting, causing chaos, the whistle from the crow’s nest still shrilling.

Kip didn’t think, didn’t hesitate. He dove into the water.

The water was cool and the light of the moon and stars did nothing to penetrate its depths. Under the surface, Kip could see nothing. He relaxed his eyes and looked for heat.

There!

Kip swam. He wasn’t an accomplished swimmer, but though his target was facedown and unmoving, Gavin wasn’t sinking yet.

That changed before Kip reached his father’s body. Gavin slipped beneath the waves and Kip took one deep breath and managed to snag his tunic before he got too deep. Kip pulled him to the surface, nearly skewering himself on the sword still protruding from his father’s back. He flailed in the water, but the truth was, he was barely a good enough swimmer to float by himself, even with all his blubber. Swimming for two was damn near impossible.

He wasn’t even able to cry out for help. The flagship gave no immediate signs of turning either. Kip was a good hundred and fifty paces away before the bell started ringing.

Andross Guile didn’t want to find him. He’d delayed the Blackguards as long as he could. The bastard.

Kip finally found a position floating on his back where his buoyancy and one flailing arm mostly kept him afloat and able to breathe. Almost every swell would crest over his head, but if he breathed at the right time, he wouldn’t inhale water.

He shouted, “Help! Man overboard!” But he had no hope that the flagship was going to hear him. It was only now lighting up and beginning to turn. A ship of that size wasn’t going to get back to Kip for ten or fifteen minutes, if it ever found him at all. If any Blackguards had jumped into the water after him, Kip couldn’t see them. More to the point, they wouldn’t be able to see
him
unless he was lucky enough to get a sub-red.

Kip tried to fight the panic clamping down on his chest. It made it hard to breathe. He took a wave at the wrong time and hacked and coughed to clear his lung, almost losing his father’s body. Dear Orholam. Dear Orholam, no.

Gavin Guile was dead. Dead. Dear Orholam, no. Father, why? Why’d you do it?

When he regained some calm, he realized he’d soaked up some light during the fight. He hadn’t even been aware of it. He supposed that like his testing, the fear and anger had dilated his eyes. He’d soaked up luxin without even being conscious of it.

He had a little red and a little yellow. There were other ships out here, he knew it. He just had to let them know he was here. Someone would save him.

After taking a deep breath, he shot sparkling yellow out of his finger. Even that small action pushed him under the waves and left him gasping.

He wondered if there were sharks. He wondered if sharks could smell luxin. He knew they could smell blood, and his father’s blood would be drawing them.

He didn’t panic, though. He didn’t have anything left in him to panic with. After a minute, he held up his hand and drafted red luxin around his finger. With a few tries, he was able to light it with the yellow.

But he couldn’t hold it up and hold his father and swim. He tried to light it again after bobbing in the waves a bit, but too much had washed away.

He heard the ship before he saw it. It came up behind him and blocked out the light behind. A net was thrown over him, and within a minute, he and his father were pulled up, rolled onto the deck.

“What have we? What have we?” A man started cackling. “Ceres!” he shouted. “Ceres, you fickle wench! You beautiful bitch, Gunner loves you! Thank you! Apology accepted! Boys, gather ’round. See what Captain Gunner’s luck has brought us.”

Kip was lying on his back, exhausted. All he had strength to do was breathe.

Gunner? Kip’s thoughts were slow. Gunner was the man on the pirate ship Gavin and Kip and Liv and Ironfist had sunk outside of Garriston, wasn’t he? Gavin had said he hadn’t killed the man because he was an artist. Was this the same man?

Captain Gunner, a night-black Ilytian bare-chested under a waistcoat—a different waistcoat than last time—rolled Gavin over as far as the protruding blade allowed. It
was
the same Gunner. Oh hell. “Bugger me,” Gunner said, looking at the blade. He tore it out of Gavin’s body and held it aloft.

Kip’s blade was not what it had been. His knife was now a longsword.
No, more. The wide blade was three and a half feet long, and whiter than ivory, single-edged with twin black whorls crisscrossing up the blade. Bracketed by those black, twisting, living whorls, every one of those seven jewels now burned with inner light, each one its own color from sub-red to superviolet. The spine of the blade was a thin musket, except for the last hand’s breadth, which was pure blade.

Gunner swung the blade back and forth. “Light,” he said. “Lighter than should be possible.” But when he saw the musket, how the single cutout in the blade was positioned to give space for fingers to steady the barrel, he positively chortled.

The sound of vomiting made Kip and Gunner both turn from their inspection of the blade. Murmurs shot through the crew as Gavin puked water onto the deck.

He rolled over, gasping and coughing.

“Alive? Take him below,” Gunner ordered. “Feed him, tend to his wounds, and bind him. Don’t let him escape. He’s a fighter.” The men lifted Gavin and carried him belowdecks. Captain Gunner shouted again, “Ceres! Ceres! I’m no miser! You share with me, I share with you. I could use this man.” He was talking about Kip, Kip realized. “He’s a drafter. You saw! You know how bad I been wanting a drafter! Good drafter’s hard to find on the sea, Ceres. But you done me right.”

Oh shit.

“I do this, we call it straight between us? Fair? You gave me two. I’ll give you one back!” Gunner said. “Boys?”

Hands descended. Kip tried to fight, but he only got a bloody nose for his trouble. He was so weak there was no resisting. With a heave, the men tossed him back into the sea.

He surfaced in the darkness, hearing only the sweep of oars and the distant sound of Gunner giving orders and laughing.

Kip swam, barely having the energy to keep floating on his back, out of light, unable to draft, certain that someone would come.

No one did.

Koios White Oak the Color Prince came the next morning to the palace in which he’d installed Liv. He seemed jubilant as he beckoned her to join him on the roof.

Together, they looked out over the city. There were some fires in a few neighborhoods. Fighting still continued in pockets. It would be weeks, probably, until the city was pacified. The Color Prince was offering clemency to those rebels who laid down their arms in the next two days. Those who continued fighting would be subject to retributive rapes, the killing of family members, and all the horrors his men could dream up. He didn’t invent war, he said, and he would do anything to end it quickly. Sharp, quick brutality was better, he said, than tolerating protracted lawlessness.

“Did it work?” Liv asked.

“Birthing Atirat?” the prince asked. “Oh yes. You succeeded marvelously. The failure was Atirat’s own—and Zymun’s. We’ll retake the fort on Ruic Head tomorrow and perhaps we’ll learn what happened. It seems he did capture it, but he must have botched something, because they knew he had it. And then he lost it. If he lives, I don’t expect he’ll come back to camp. You’re free of him.”

That was a relief, though Liv felt weak for feeling it. She’d turned the tide of a battle, and she was afraid of a sniveling teenaged boy?

“There’s more good news,” the prince said. “Aside from your tremendous success and us taking the city. Your father wasn’t fighting for them.”

“I know,” Liv said.

“Has he been in communication with you?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know?” Koios White Oak asked.

“Because we won.”

The prince laughed, but Liv could tell her answer peeved him. “Let us hope we never have to test your confidence in his abilities, then. But there’s more. Can you feel it?”

He meant magically. “No. I don’t have your senses,” Liv said.

“The Prism is dead. The colors are free.”

“I don’t understand,” Liv said. She felt sick. Her senses had been shut off as soon as Atirat had taken shape. She’d missed the climax of the battle, and she’d hoped that somehow she’d been wrong, that Kip and Karris and Gavin had lived.

“This…” Koios swept a hand toward the bay. “This was a setback. The bane rise spontaneously, Aliviana. All we need to do is wait, and there will be another. Another blue, another green, another one of
every
color, now.”

She looked over at him sharply. No wonder he wasn’t very upset.

“It will take time, but they can’t stop us now, Liv. The only trick for us is to make sure that as each bane rises, a drafter we trust is at the center of it.”