The Blinding Knife (82 page)

After all they’d been through together. The fights with each other, against wights. The darkness and despair. He tucked a wisp of her hair behind her ear. Touched her face gently. Memorized her. He took a breath, and it was pure.

In a world where every danger was growing and his own strength was failing, Karris had his back. She’d always had his back. And somehow, dying though he was, power fractured, doom looming, he felt more whole than ever.

The yoke of responsibility lay hanging off the bedpost. Gavin kissed his sleeping wife’s forehead, cracked his neck, rolled his shoulders, and picked the damn thing back up. Slipped it on. It felt good. It felt like it was made for him.

Marissia was waiting at the door. Her face was carefully composed, hands folded, ready to serve. Gavin handed her the note for the tower register to record his mother freeing her slave. Marissia took it silently, but there was a touch of hesitancy in her stance.

“Marissia,” Gavin said quietly. “I… if you’re gone when I get back, I understand, but you will always have a place here.”

She bowed jerkily, and he could tell she was doing it to cover her sudden tears. She practically fled the room. Gavin rubbed the bridge of his nose and stepped into the hallway, doing his best not to look after her. Commander Ironfist was there, waiting silently.

“Commander,” Gavin said. “How do you feel about doing a little skimming? Flirt-with-death dangerous.”

Ironfist said nothing, but his mouth quirked up in a little grin.

Though much is taken, much abides
, Gevison had once said.

Gavin hated poets. He and Ironfist had gathered food and weapons and taken a scull out into open waters.

“You going to suit up?” Gavin asked, pulling on armor.

“I’ve skimmed with you before,” Ironfist said.

“And?”

“I prefer not to strap on weights when I may have to swim.”

Ah yes, not everyone could swim in full armor. Benefit of being me.

“Rough weather today,” Ironfist said.

That was all he said, but Gavin could tell he wasn’t looking forward to going at extremely high speed over large waves. No wonder he didn’t want his armor.

But in another minute, they were off across the waves. As before, Ironfist made an excellent partner on the skimmer, and their combined effort made them move quickly enough that Gavin was able to use the foils to lift the skimmer mostly free of the water. That was good, because the chop was rough today, up to two paces high. With the skimmer’s foils just right, Gavin was able to keep the boat mostly level. If they’d been right on the surface, it would have been a horrendous trip, impossible, really.

After a few hours, though, they escaped the poor weather.

They found the Atashian coast, and Gavin skimmed west until he saw a bay that he recognized. Between the incredible speed at which they’d traveled and the impossibility of taking accurate navigational readings while in the middle of the chop, they’d ended up thirty leagues off course. That much error for a normal ship could mean an extra day at sea. Not for them.

They’d overshot the Color Prince’s army, going too far south.
Ironfist drafted a binocle, and they saw several Ilytian ships. Traders, supplying the army. Civilians, but civilians possibly carrying guns and powder that would wreak havoc on the peaceful innocents of Ru.

Gavin looked at Ironfist. Ironfist shook his head.

He was right. Scout first. Fight later.

They skimmed through the emerald waters off Idoss, giving it a wide berth. People in towers with spyglasses with fine lenses would see them long before they could gather any intelligence. They passed more ships, almost all of them heading west, supplying the army, too, no doubt.

It wasn’t good. A few Ilytian ships could simply be enterprising traders who knew they could make a quick profit. But seeing dozens of galleys from Idoss, coccas from Ruthgar (meaningless because many merchants owned those), and caravels from Garriston meant that whatever government the advancing army had left behind was actually doing its best to support the invasion. That meant reasonably good governance. As Gavin knew, the first sign of trouble is when those cities you’ve subdued stop sending you supplies. If Garriston had been turned into a city that could
export
goods in only a few months, that meant that the Color Prince was doing a better job governing it when he
wasn’t
there than the rapacious Ruthgari governor had done when he
was
there. Not good news.

They spent the rest of the day scouting, not daring to head too near Ruic Head, where the fort would doubtless have good spotters, but taking note of exactly how many ships they passed, and the places where they might have missed ships. The biggest thing they learned simply from the positions of the ships was that Gavin had been right. The army was perhaps six days’ march from Ru. That meant the ships coming to help from the Chromeria would arrive only a day before the Color Prince’s army. If the weather cooperated.

Not enough time. It took men time to move barrels of powder into place in a city under siege. It took them time to figure where the best shooting angles were, and to train to remember the angles in the heat and panic of battle. It took time for men to establish infirmaries and barracks in the most logical places, and to determine which units would work with which, and for officers to figure out which of their ally’s officers were morons. Coordination, logistics, backup plans,
strongpoints, which places must be defended at all costs and which could be yielded and retaken at grievous cost to the enemy—all these took time. It wasn’t enough to put a few thousand men in a city, and that was what Gavin was afraid his father was going to do.

Andross Guile, for all his intelligence, was a politician and a drafter, not a general. Gavin couldn’t hate him for it. It was how he saw himself, too. Men like Corvan Danavis had different strengths, and Gavin had learned to trust him more than himself. At the Battle of Ivor’s Ridge, he’d seen a platoon, cut down to half strength, isolated and hard pressed on his army’s left flank. If they’d crumpled, the line would have shattered, and they’d been outnumbered at least three to one.

Dazen had called off the charge he’d been planning, in order to go reinforce them.

General Danavis had stopped him. “I know those men,” he’d said. “They’ll hold. Now go.”

Dazen did, and had won the battle. Without his charge into the center, the center would have broken. He hadn’t even seen it, hadn’t known how bad the center was until he arrived there with two hundred horse and fifty mounted drafters. Corvan had, and he’d been right about the platoon on the flank, too. If Dazen had done what he thought instead, they’d have lost. He might have escaped after that battle, but his army would have been destroyed.

Andross Guile, on the other hand, would never trust anyone more than himself.

Gavin and Ironfist returned after sunset, sculling the last leagues to hide the skimmer. They didn’t return to the Chromeria, though. Instead, they met the first ships of the invasion force.

Ironfist went off to check where his Blackguards were berthed, while Gavin went to find the generals. He briefed them on everything he’d found and ignored their questions about how he’d learned the exact locations of enemy ships, in real time, halfway across the sea.

Worse, he could tell that the fools didn’t believe him.

Gavin made sure a secretary wrote it all down. “Just keep two sets of plans,” Gavin said. “In one, do whatever you were already planning to do with what limited intelligence you have.” Gavin meant it both ways, of course. “In the other, plan as if everything I say is true. Soon enough, you’ll know which to use.”

He left them then, and went to the cabin some noble had been evicted from as soon as the men on the ship saw Gavin arrive. Tomorrow, he would go back out and sink as many ships as possible. It was a damned thing, war. He didn’t like killing merchants, and he liked killing the slaves forced to row their ships even less, but that which strengthens your enemy must be denied him.

Orholam, if you existed, if you walked the earth as a man, what would you do?

There was a knock at the door. Orholam was fast some days.

It was Kip. “Kip?” Gavin said, surprised.

“Yes, sir.”

“I didn’t mean I’d forgotten who you were,” Gavin said.

“Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir. Of course not.”

Gavin smiled, though he was exhausted, and beckoned the boy in.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, sir,” Kip said. “The runts—I mean the Blackguard inductees—”

“I know what they call inductees, Kip,” Gavin said. He smiled. It took a long time to gain respect among the Blackguard. Scrubs, runts, wobs, nunks—they had plenty of derogatory names that didn’t stop until the last vows. Even then, the first year for a full Blackguard was usually hell.

“Yes, sir, of course.” Kip blushed. “The commander said war’s coming, and there’s no way to prepare for war like being close enough to smell its breath, sir. We’re to help move supplies and civilians. We’ll be off the front lines, but not quite safe, he said.”

He said it with such an adult tone and assurance that Gavin looked at his brother’s bastard son with new eyes. Four months had changed the boy. He was still chunky—maybe always would be—but as only young men can do, he’d dropped at least a seven already. It was like watching a man emerge from himself. The fat that had rounded and softened his features was receding. The strong line of his jaw and brow was all Guile. He was broad-shouldered, and his arms, though still shapeless, were huge. His confidence was soaring today, of course, his having just gotten into the Blackguard. It would crumple again—a dozen times. Boys, especially athletes, can look like a man in a day—but it takes them longer to reconcile themselves to themselves. But this Kip, this was a glimpse of the Kip who could be.

And Gavin liked that Kip.

It takes some of us a great deal longer to reconcile ourselves to ourselves, does it?

Looking at his brother’s son, Gavin was pierced with sorrow. He would never have his own son. Not even if he achieved his impossible goal, and that was looking less and less likely with every passing day.

Aware that he had paused too long, Gavin said, “It’s a good plan. Tell the rest of the runts that we’re going to lose this city, so they shouldn’t get any heroic ideas in their heads. Heroism is a fine thing, but heroism wasted means you can’t be there to help on the day you can make a difference.”

“Yes, sir. Trainer Fisk has been saying the same thing to us. Except the part about losing.” Kip frowned. “But thank you. For telling me the truth.”

Thank you for telling me the truth. Now, if there wasn’t some bitter irony in that statement, Gavin was a marsh mug.

“I want to go with you tomorrow,” Kip said.

“And what makes you think I’m going anywhere tomorrow—other than the fact that all of us are already traveling, so you’ll be going with me by default?”

“You’re the promachos, sir. Whether they call you that or not. I want to fight with you.”

So ready to fight. But was I any different? How many men did I kill before I really understood what it meant 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.”