The Blinding Knife

Chapter 12

“Every time you draft, you’re hastening your death,” Magister Kadah said. She wasn’t yet middle-aged, but she already seemed wizened, mousy, with hunched shoulders, hair that hadn’t seen a brush or a pick in weeks, green spectacles on a gold chain around her neck, and a thin switch of green luxin in her hand. “Your death doesn’t matter, but depriving your satrap of an expensive tool does. Your death doesn’t matter, but depriving your community of what it needs to survive does. We who draft are slaves. Slaves to Orholam, to light, to the Prism, the satraps, and our cities.”

Cheery sort. Kip tried to keep his expression neutral as he sat in on his first class at the Chromeria.

“Lies first, lessons later,” a boy said behind Kip.

“What?” Kip asked. He looked over his shoulder. The boy was, oddly, wearing clear spectacles with thick black mahogany frames in front of thicker black brows. The lenses made one eye look bigger than the other. But more intriguing than his Ruthgari looks-curly light brown hair, small nose, tan skin, brown eyes-were the mechanical spectacles themselves. Two colored lenses, one yellow, one blue, rested on hinges, ready to be clicked down over the clear lenses at a moment’s notice.

The boy grinned, seeing Kip’s stare. “My own design,” he said.

“It’s genius. I’ve never-”

Something struck Kip’s desk with a sound like a musket shot. Kip almost jumped out of his skin. He looked at the green luxin switch in the magister’s hand. She’d slammed it across his desk, missing his fingertips by a thumb’s width.

“ Master Guile,” she said.

She let the words sit in the air, announcing to anyone in the class who hadn’t known who he was that he was indeed a Guile, and she knew it.

Next she proves she doesn’t care.

“Do you think you’re better than the rest of the class, Master Guile?”

The temptation was strong, but Kip had his orders. He was to do well in his classes. Getting kicked out of them would not help him achieve that. “No, Magister,” he said. He thought he even made it sound sincere.

She wasn’t an imposing figure, neither tall nor wide, but she loomed over Kip’s seat. He leaned as far away as his seat allowed. “Do we understand each other, young man?” she asked.

It was an odd way to put it, since she hadn’t made any explicit threat, but she didn’t have to. “Yes, Magister,” Kip said.

“Discipulae, I’m sure you’ve noticed your new classmate.” The way she said it made it unclear whether or not she was referring to Kip being fat. There were a few nervous titters. “His name is Kit Guile and-”

“Kip,” Kip interjected. “Not a woody tub for toys, a tubby wooden boy.” He knew it was a mistake as soon as the words were halfway out of his mouth.

“Ah. Thank you. I’d forgotten that gutter Tyrean has its own definitions for words. Put out your hand, Kip.”

He extended his hand, not quite guessing why he needed to do so until she cracked the green switch across his knuckles.

It yanked his breath away.

“Don’t ever interrupt a magister, Kip. Even if you are a Guile.”

He looked down at his knuckles, fully expecting them to be bloody. They weren’t. She knew exactly how hard she could hit with that thing. At least she’d hit the knuckles of his right hand. His raw left hand would have been far worse.

Magister Kadah turned and walked back toward the front of the room, muttering, “Kip. Ridiculous name. But then what can one expect an illiterate slattern to name her bastard?”

It was a trap. Kip knew it was a trap. It yawned open right in front of his feet. She hates you and she has a plan, Kip. Just keep your mouth shut, Kip.

He raised his hand. It was the best compromise his brain could negotiate with his mouth.

She didn’t call on him. He kept his left hand up. Wrapped in white bandages, it was impossible to miss. It might have looked like a flag of surrender, if it weren’t so patently a rebellion.

“As you all should remember from yesterday’s lecture, drafting is the process of turning light into a physical substance, luxin.” She saw that Kip’s hand was still up, and her mouth tightened momentarily, but she ignored him. “Each color of light can be transformed into a different color of luxin, each of which has its own smell, weight, solidity, strength.”

Orholam’s beard, this? They were this far back? What a waste of “Kip, are we wasting your time?” she asked sharply. “Are we boring you?”

Trap, Kip. Don’t do it, Kip.

“No, my eyes glaze over like this all the time. Comes from having a mother who was always smoking haze.”

Her eyebrows shot up.

“I have this condition,” Kip said. Stop it, Kip. Stop. “See, I’m not just fat, I’m also slow-you know, mentally-so when I get fixated on one thing, I’m not able to go on to the next subject until all my questions are answered. Maybe I’m not advanced enough for this class. Maybe I should be moved elsewhere.”

“I do see,” she said. He knew she wasn’t going to let him go to another class. He didn’t even know if there was another class. “Well, Master Guile, this is a novice class, and we pride ourselves on not leaving behind even the slowest cattle in the herd, and obviously, you really want to say something, don’t you?”

“Yes, Magister.” He hated her. He barely knew her, and he wanted to beat her ugly face in.

She smiled. It was a deeply unpleasant smile. Small woman, so pleased to be the mistress of her domain, so proud to bully a class full of children. “Then I’ll make you a deal, Kip: you say whatever you want, but if I find it impertinent, I’ll smack your knuckles again. You see, class, this will be a nice object lesson. An analogue for drafting-there’s always a price, and you have to decide if you are willing to pay it. So, Kip?”

“You called my mother illiterate, and that’s about as true as me calling you a decent human being.” Kip’s heart was welling up, blocking his throat. “My mother sold her soul to haze. She lied and cheated and stole, I think she even whored herself a few times, but she wasn’t illiterate. So if you’re going to slander my mother to make me look pathetic, there’s plenty of true things you can say. But that is not one of them.” You bitch.

The class goggled at Kip. He didn’t know if he’d just defanged a hundred rumors, or spawned them. Maybe both, but he’d kept a level tone, and he hadn’t called his magister a liar or worse. It was sort of a victory. Sort of.

“Are you quite finished?” the magister asked.

And now the price of the victory. “Yes,” Kip said.

He put his hand on the desk for her to smack-his left hand, wrapped in bandages.

Stupid, Kip. You’re just daring her. Asking for it.

Crack! Kip jumped as the switch slammed into the table so hard it made the surface jump-just two thumbs away from his hand.

“Class, sometimes with drafting as with life, you don’t have to pay the price for misbehaving,” Magister Kadah said. “Especially if you’re a Guile. Kip, I don’t like your attitude,” she said. “Go wait in the hall.”

Kip stood and walked out into the hall, followed by twenty pairs of eyes. His fellow students were from all over the Seven Satrapies: dark-skinned Parians, the girls with hair free, the boys wearing ghotras; olive-skinned Atashians with sapphire-bright eyes; and lots of Ruthgari, small-nosed, thin-lipped, and lighter-skinned, one even a blonde. Kip was the only Tyrean, though he looked more mutt than anything: hair kinky like a Parian, but without the lean, fluid build; eyes blue like an Atashian, but skin darker than their olive complexions, nose not prominent. He even had a few freckles visible through his skin like he was part Blood Forester.

“They’ll hate you for me,” his father had told him. Then that lopsided, winsome Guile grin had struck. “But don’t worry, eventually they’ll hate you for you, too.”

It was his first day, so Kip was guessing he was being hated for Gavin Guile this time.

Samite was gone when he got out into the hall. Kip supposed the Blackguards worked on shifts. She’d probably thought he could get through one lecture without getting in trouble.

Oops.

Go ahead, he thought as he sat on the floor in the Chromeria’s hall, feel sorry for yourself. You’ve been acknowledged as a bastard of the most powerful man in the world. He saved your life many times, and he gave you the choice. You could have entered the Chromeria anonymously. You chose this.

Kip had thought he’d have at least one friend here, though. Liv had been here-until Garriston. She’d been nice to him, though she saw him as a little brother. But now she was gone, fighting for the Color Prince, choosing to believe comforting lies. Kip hated her for that, despised her for seeking the easy way out-but most of all he missed her.

He sat close to the door, trying to overhear Magister Kadah’s lecture, trying to think about magic so he didn’t think about anything else. The magister was saying something about the properties of green luxin? He thought about trying to draft some right here in the hall. It would be a bad idea, though. Green made you wild, made you disregard authority. Now would be a bad time for that. He smiled, though, thinking about it.

“Are you Kip?” a voice intruded, breaking Kip out of his fantasy. The speaker was a tiny, clean-shaven, very dark Parian man in a starched headscarf and a slave’s robe of fine cotton.

“Uh, yes.” Kip stood and the ball of dread that dropped into his stomach told him who’d sent the slave.

The man eyed him for long moments, clearly judging him, but not letting the verdict show in his face. Andross Guile’s head slave and right hand was named Grinwoody, Gavin had told Kip. Grinwoody said, “Luxlord Guile requires your presence.”

Luxlord Guile, as in Andross Guile, one of the richest men in the world, with estates throughout Ruthgar, Blood Forest, and Paria. On the ruling council known as the Spectrum, he was the Red. Father of two Prisms, Gavin and the rebel who’d almost destroyed the world, Dazen. Andross Guile was, Kip thought, the only man in the world Gavin Guile feared.

Grandfather.

And Kip was a bastard, a blot on the family honor. Felia Guile, Kip’s grandmother and the only person who could massage Andross Guile’s tyranny, was now dead.

But before Kip ran face first into that wall, he had another problem. He couldn’t leave the hall without giving Magister Kadah fresh reasons to hate him, and he couldn’t show Andross Guile disrespect by making him wait.

“Uh, will you tell my magister that I’ve been summoned?” Kip asked.

Grinwoody looked at him, expressionless.

Kip felt foolish. Like he couldn’t take one step, poke his head in the door himself, and say, “I’ve been summoned.” He opened his mouth to explain himself, remembered Gavin’s orders: Remember who you are.

He was going to apologize, or say please, but he stopped himself.

After another moment of weighing Kip, Grinwoody acquiesced. He rapped on the door and stepped into the classroom. “Luxlord Guile requires Kip’s presence.”

He didn’t give Magister Kadah a chance to respond, though Kip would have given his left eye to see the expression on her face. Grinwoody was a slave, but a slave authorized to do his duty by one of the most powerful men in the world. Nothing the magister said mattered. Grinwoody was a man who remembered who he was.

The real question was, who was Kip? Grinwoody had referred to him only by his first name. It hadn’t been, ‘Luxlord Guile requires his grandson.’

What had Gavin said? ‘We’ll count it a victory if you avoid wetting yourself’?

Kip cleared his throat. “Uh, you mind if we stop by the privies on the way?”