The Blinding Knife

Chapter 11

“I hope you got your rest, little Guile,” a short, thick Blackguard woman named Samite said. She was stationed with him near the back of their column of Blackguards. The galleass had just arrived at Big Jasper this morning, and the Blackguards were the first off. “It’s going to be a long day for you.”

Rest? Kip had been trying to figure out how to conceal his big secret, his inheritance, the last and only gift his mother had ever given him. He had a large, ornate jeweled white dagger that no one knew about, and he had a large, ornate polished dagger box. He could put the dagger in the dagger box, of course, but some paranoid corner of his brain was certain that the first thing a person would ask when they saw the box was if he would open it.

How could he say no?

So late into the night, he’d sat in his little bunk in the darkness, trying not to wake the Blackguards sleeping in the other bunks. He’d found twine and he tied the dagger to his back, a process that took a good ten minutes with his bandaged hand. Its point hung down to his butt, under his clothes, held in place by his belt.

It wasn’t a great solution, but it was the best he could come up with. After his night, a long day was just what he needed now. Still, he mustered a rueful smile for Samite. She was nice, despite her crooked, oft-broken nose and prominently missing front tooth. She was short and solid as a seawall.

They were some of the last to join the column, and once formed up, the Blackguards set off at a slow jog.

Kip thought that he wouldn’t be quite as awestruck the second time he saw the Chromeria. He was wrong. He was still awed even by Big Jasper Island, which was entirely covered by a city. The city was all multicolored domes on top of whitewashed square buildings. Every intersection was adorned with a tower at the top of which hung a mirror, polished and geared so that the mirror could direct sunlight or even moonlight into any part of the city. The Thousand Stars, they called them. The streets were laid out in straight lines with mathematical precision so as to cut off as few beams of light as possible.

Seeing him studying the structures, Samite said, “There is no darkness on Big Jasper, they like to say.” She grinned her gap-toothed grin. “Not literally true, but more true here than anywhere else in the world.”

Kip nodded, saving his air for the jogging. In simply looking over at her for an instant, he almost collided with a black-robed luxiat.

The streets were packed with thousands of people-not for market day or any particular holy day, Kip realized. This was normal for Big Jasper. And the people themselves came from every arc of the Seven Satrapies. Red-haired pale savages from deep within the Blood Forest to woolen-doublet-wearing midnight Ilytians, light-skinned Ruthgari in their wide straw hats to shield them from the sun, Abornean men and women virtually indistinguishable from each other in their layers of silks and earrings.

But regardless of their lineage, the people on the streets had one thing in common: their awe for the Blackguards with whom Kip was jogging. People got out of the way for them, and the Blackguards took it as their due.

At first, Kip tried not to look too conspicuously out of place among all the hard-muscled physiques around him, but soon he was just trying to keep up.

“Don’t worry,” Samite said. Infuriatingly, despite her own body being nearly as wide as it was tall, she wasn’t even breathing hard. “If you can’t keep up, we have orders to carry you.”

Carry me? The mortification of the mental image was enough to keep Kip going. Plus, if they carried him, they’d discover the dagger.

Finally they crossed the Lily’s Stem, the transparent blue-and-yellow-luxin-covered bridge between Little Jasper Island and Big Jasper Island.

Ironfist gave some sort of signal that Kip didn’t see as the Blackguards came into the great yard between the six outer towers of the Chromeria, and the troop disappeared in half a dozen different directions. Kip leaned over with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his wind. He flinched, bit back a curse, and took his weight off his left hand.

“Concealed weapons are most useful if you can draw them on short notice,” Samite said.

Kip stood up abruptly. Of course. Leaning forward had pressed the outline of the dagger against his clothes, and because of their work, of all people, Blackguards would be the best at noticing concealed weapons.

Excellent, Kip. Outstanding. You couldn’t even hide the dagger for one hour.

Still, she said nothing further.

Kip looked after the departing Blackguards. Ironfist was gone, too. “Uh, what am I supposed to do?” he asked Samite.

“I’ll take you to your new quarters, and then to your lectures.”

Kip’s stomach dropped. A class full of people who all knew each other and would stare at him when he came in. He’d be dropped into the middle of some subject he knew nothing about, and he’d look stupid. He swallowed.

I’ve seen a sea demon, faced color wights, been in battle, and killed… and I’m nervous about being the new boy. Kip grimaced, but it still didn’t make him feel any better.

He followed Samite up into the central tower, up one of the counterweighted lifts. “You get the layout before?” she asked.

“The commander took me straight to the Threshing. Not really.”

“We don’t have time today, sadly. I like watching the fresh meat gawk.” She grinned, but it was friendly. “In short, each tower houses its own color of drafters and most of the training facilities for them, though everyone shares some barracks, some offices, some storerooms, some libraries. At the base of each tower there are more specialized functions: under the blue tower are the smelters and glass furnaces, under the green are gardens and menageries, under the red is the mirth hall and conservatories, under the yellow is the infirmary and discipline areas, under sub-red are the kitchens and the stockyards, under the Prism’s Tower is the great hall. Got it?”

He hoped she was joking. He smiled uncertainly as they stepped out into an empty level, not far up. She walked him down the hall and opened an oak door to a barracks. “Find an empty bed,” she said.

There was no one inside, empty pallets stretching from wall to wall. At the foot of each one was a chest for personal items.

“Please tell me there isn’t some kind of pecking order for who gets what bed,” Kip said.

“There isn’t some kind of pecking order for who gets what bed,” she said in a monotone.

“You’re lying?” he asked.

“Correct.”

“What’s the worst bed in the room?”

“In the back. Farthest from the door.”

Kip began walking to the last bed when he realized something. He stopped. “I don’t really have any stuff.” He only had a cloak, the ornate knife box, and the knife.

Samite cleared her throat.

“What?”

“You’re not going to class armed.”

Oh hell.

“We’ll also be taking you to the tailors to get you Chromeria garb.”

What was he supposed to do? Leave a priceless dagger in a barracks? Samite only knew that he had a knife. They’d just left a war zone, so that was no surprise. But if he showed it to her, she’d surely report it. He had to make it uninteresting even to her.

“I’m going to, um, have to take off my shirt to get my knife off. Can, uh, you turn your back?” Kip asked.

She turned her back, without even making any cracks or grinning.

Kip moved quickly to his pallet and stripped off his shirt and untied the dagger. He pulled the shirt back on and folded his cloak clumsily. He opened the chest. Inside was a thin, folded blanket. Kip set the cloak and the dagger box into his chest, and put the chest at the foot of the bed.

“Done yet?” Samite asked.

“Um, no! Just a minute.”

Kip looked over the beds. There were maybe sixty pallets in the room. The unoccupied beds-those nearest Kip-were unmade and had the chest underneath them. The occupied beds were made and had the chest at the foot.

There were no hiding places, just as there was no privacy.

Kip tucked the dagger under the mattress. He made the bed quickly, trying to smooth out the wrinkles so the lump wasn’t obvious. Then he started walking back toward Samite.

“So you know,” Samite said, “best way to get something stolen is to hide it under your mattress. It’s where the bullies and thieves always look first.”

I’m terrible at this! I should have told my father about the dagger. Even if he took it away from me, that would have been better than having some sixteen-year-old butt fungus steal it. Damn it, mother, couldn’t you have given me a locket?

Kip went back to his pallet, grabbed the dagger, and looked around. He walked down five rows to one of the unoccupied pallets, opened the chest under that bed, and tucked the knife under the blanket. Better than nothing. He slid the chest back under the bed, grimacing.

“Fantastic,” he said. “What’s next?”

Next was the tailors’, where Kip had to strip down for the fitting. The tailors were women. One of them was attractive, and as she knelt in front of him standing in his underwear, he could see straight down her cleavage. He spent the next half hour staring at the ceiling and praying. And just when Kip was finally leaving, thanking Orholam that his body hadn’t done anything to mortify him, the other woman cleared her throat and handed him an extra pair of clean underwear. “You can wash them once in a while,” she said conspiratorially. “And your armpits, too.”

He almost died.

They made him go sponge bathe-he angrily waved off the slave who tried to help him-and change into his new white tunic and new white pants, and new underwear, and a tower slave took his clothes to the barracks. Then they went and registered with some official who made Kip sign his name on a bunch of forms, and then Samite took him to the dining hall where he was allowed a very small and very fast lunch, and then she showed him where the toilets were on each level of the towers.

And then she took him to his first class. “I can come inside or I can wait outside. Your choice,” she said.

“Outside. Please, outside.” He was already embarrassed enough that he had a bodyguard. He looked into the lecture hall, trying to hide his nerves, while other students streamed past him. He was hungry. What wouldn’t he give for a pie right now. He asked, “Anything I should, uh, know?”

“You’re expected not to know anything.”

Ah, then I might even exceed expectations.