The Blinding Knife

Chapter 105

“I lured you here under false pretenses,” Andross Guile said as Kip came into his dark cabin. The Red had of course taken the captain’s cabin, and though he’d put curtains on the windows, it wasn’t nearly as pitch dark as his own apartments back at the Chromeria. Kip had forgotten to soak up superviolet light before coming in, so he was at the mercy of the dim light and his ears. But Luxlord Guile seemed to be in unusually good spirits, and that put Kip on his guard. “I don’t want to play a game with you. I want to apologize,” Andross said.

Kip remembered the glasses he carried, and put the sub-red on. It didn’t help that much. “For what?” he asked. He could think of a dozen things for which the old monster should apologize, but he couldn’t imagine the man apologizing for any of them.

“For trying to have you killed.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Kip asked.

“Believe me, I thought you did owe me an apology for refusing to die. But this is me apologizing to you.”

“You’re going to have to do better than that,” Kip said.

Outlined against the thin light coming beneath one curtain and glowing in sub-red, Kip saw Andross Guile tense, his fists ball. “Remember what you are, boy!” He relaxed with an effort. “You’d just come to the Chromeria and my son barely knew you. If you’d cracked under the pressure and jumped to your death, it would have been a very brief scandal, brought up idly, revived some six months later when I had new evidence ‘found’ that the woman who’d claimed to be your mother confessed to lying, having taken money from a rival family to smear Gavin. Then it would have been forgotten. You would have just been another attack on a family that has endured a thousand, an anecdote of an attempted smear on a great house.”

“Mistress Helel? You sent that fat woman who tried to throw me out of the tower?” Kip asked. Andross kept talking, but Kip was still struggling to come to grips with what he’d said first.

“Was that her name? Oh, and while I’m clearing the air… I paid those idiots in your Blackguard training class to block you. No harm done, right? Regardless, I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” Kip asked, incredulous. Like that was enough?

Kip saw an eyebrow rise above one of the big lenses, as if the man was wondering how stupid this fat boy was. Andross Guile raised his index finger. “I want you to know, Kip, I haven’t apologized to anyone in twenty years.”

“I’m honored,” Kip said.

The old man chose to ignore the sarcasm. “Well, if that’s behind us, perhaps you would like to play some Nine Kings?”

“What? What? No! You tried to kill me! You can’t-you can’t just try to kill people because they’re inconvenient.”

Andross Guile’s head tilted like a dog’s, trying to understand this odd, odd boy. “Reality begs to differ.”

But Kip felt the world going gray. “This is all a screen. A distraction. You killed Lucia,” he said. Kip saw her again, stepping into the line of fire. He saw her face bloody, neck torn open by a musket ball, pumping blood, blood, blood. Kip shivered.

“Who?” Andross asked.

“The girl in my Blackguard class who took the bullet you meant for me!”

“What are you talking about?” Andross asked.

Kip’s rising rage wavered. “Someone tried to shoot me, during training. They killed her instead.”

The old man shook his head, like Kip was a moron. “Why would I go to the trouble and expense to block you from the Blackguard if I intended to kill you before you get could get in? I meant you to be a failure, not a corpse.”

“Maybe you were making doubly sure you stopped me.”

“It’s nice that you have such a high opinion of yourself, but use that puny brain of yours. All these accusations. Again! If you were killed, there’d be an investigation. The boys who agreed to block you from the Blackguard would come forward. After all, it’s one thing to make someone fail and have to try again next season, but something else altogether to kill them. You start killing people, and consciences get pricked. You think I’d leave my seal where it could be seen like that? You think I would fail twice the same way? No, boy, believe me, if I wanted you dead, you would be.”

As insulting as it was, Kip thought it was probably true. In fact, he thought it was more likely true because Andross Guile had been insulting him when he said it. “So why’d you try to block me from the Blackguard?”

“To foil my son. He has plans for you, and he was defying me. He needed to be punished, and reminded of certain… verities.”

“So why tell me now? What do you want?” Kip had no doubt that the loathsome old man did have a plan. He wanted something from Kip. “I could go tell…”

“Tell whom? Please.” Andross Guile waved it away, and Kip realized that the man could confess with impunity. He was right. No one was going to take Kip’s word, especially not with an utter lack of evidence. “Kip, I have to tell you something, and I don’t expect you’ll believe me, but maybe you will someday. I owe you my life, boy. Oh, not in any melodramatic sense, of course. My wife-your grandmother-left me and committed suicide. Albeit the suicide of the Freeing. I loved her. I lived for her. And she rejected me, preferring to die rather than spend another day in my company. Have you ever faced a rejection so profound?”

Kip thought of his mother, choosing to blast her brain on haze or any other intoxicant she could get until she was able to forget him, committing a slower, less noble suicide day by day. But Andross Guile wasn’t looking for commiseration.

“I wanted to die. I considered following her and laying open my veins in the bath. And do you know what saved me?”

“Me?” Kip asked dubiously.

“Ha! Don’t flatter yourself. Nine Kings. Distractions saved me. Even this old heart takes time to muddle through grief, but those distractions kept me alive long enough to do it. My petty tortures of you kept my mind occupied, gave me something to look forward to. Would Kip fail here? What could I come up with to take away from him when he lost our game tomorrow? How else could I test the boy, in ways that strained you but gave you some chance for victory?”

“You did not let me win. Don’t even pretend you-”

“Bah! You think your wits are a match for mine? Well, I’ll let you wonder. Now shut your mouth, I’m trying to thank you.”

Kip fell into sullen silence, feeling abruptly like a child again. Robbed of his rage, he felt powerless in Andross’s august presence.

Andross sighed. “Well, there. Thank you. That is all.”

“That’s it?” Kip asked.

The man sank down lower in his chair. Grimaced. “You’ve earned my respect, Kip. You’ve overcome adversity that would have crushed lesser men. You’ve surprised me. Not once, but several times. When I think of you, I’m disgusted and disappointed that my son could make… this. And yet, despite this blubber and this loud mouth and this utter lack of self-control, these Tyrean manners and…” He waved a hand, as if there was much more objectionable about Kip but that it was a tangent. “Despite it all, Kip, you consistently win.” His voice grew scratchy. “I have lost my wife and all my boys now, one way or another. Perhaps I am to blame for some shred of that. But you, Kip, you have proved you are a Guile. I will hinder you no more.” He turned away and gestured Kip to go.

Kip walked to the door slowly, bewildered.

“Perhaps,” the lonely old man said in the darkness, not turning, “perhaps someday we could play that last game you owe me.”

Kip left the cabin and closed the door under Grinwoody’s disapproving eyes.