Clearly, someone was awake, though, doubtless alarmed at the burgeoning number of unknown ships in their harbor, because Kip saw several messengers running from the Chromeria toward the docks. He even heard one waylaid by a barking dog. Apparently the Cwn y Wawr had landed successfully.
By now Tisis should be halfway to her safe house in a defensible mansion in a Ruthgari neighborhood. If Kip were arrested, she had to be safe. She would direct the army.
The streets of Big Jasper felt different than they had a year ago. Not only were they twice as crowded, dirtier, and more hostile, but they also felt smaller and more scared. What had seemed to Kip to be the center of the world, snug and smug in its towering superiority, was now a too-tall cairn, stone stacked on stone, wondering if the wind would blow it down.
They made it unimpeded all the way to the Lily’s Stem and crossed that luxin bridge onto Little Jasper. An honor guard of Ruthgari soldiers in green fell in behind them—Eirene Malargos’s ambassador’s doing, no doubt. So Tisis’s skimmer-sent letters had reached him.
Then they were joined by four of the Ruthgari Satrapah Ptolos’s own guard. Actually, Kip wasn’t even sure if Ruthgar was still led by Satrapah Ptolos these days. There had been rumblings that Eirene Malargos was considering taking over personally in this time of crisis instead of ruling from behind.
Someone had cleared out a path through the various petitioners and nobles in the great hall at ground level, and everyone turned to watch them walk through. Kip saw hostile faces from the white-clad Lightguards, but he and his entourage entered the lifts without being impeded.
No one asked where they were going. Their escorting soldiers set the plates and took them to the audience-hall level.
“Just, uh, in case I don’t get another chance to say it,” Ferkudi said. He cleared his throat. “Uh, it’s been an honor to serve you, my lord.”
Big Leo grunted an affirmation. Ben-hadad cleared his throat in agreement.
“More than that, for me,” Cruxer said quietly, not turning his head, his shoulders back. “This work saved my life after, after Lucia passed. It’s been purpose and a pursuit worthy of my whole heart.”
The rest rumbled agreement, and Kip’s heart swelled for these men who—
“Ah shit, you’re all makin’ me weepy,” Winsen deadpanned. He dabbed at a dry eye.
Big Leo smacked the side of Winsen’s head.
“Dammit, Leo!” Winsen said. “I keep telling you, don’ t—”
“You deserved that one,” Big Leo said.
“Commander?” Winsen said.
“You deserved that one,” Cruxer said.
“Fine,” Winsen said. “Maybe a little. I just get cranky when I put my life in the hands of a man with a pucker like a paper press.”
“What does that even mean?” Ferkudi asked. “And which man?”
Kip closed his eyes, a smile stealing over his face at their banter, at their inability to stay serious for more than a ten count. These men would face death for him—and they believed they were facing it for him now, in these serene halls. He’d brought them here, and they had no illusions that this place was safe.
“He’s talking about the promachos,” Cruxer told Ferkudi.
“Yeah, but still,” Ferkudi said, “what does that mean?” He looked around. “Does this one go in the Box?”
“We killed Lightguards when we left,” Cruxer said. “And those men’s comrades surely gave their side of that story, and only their side of the story, while we were gone.”
“I’m not stupid,” Ferkudi said. “I know all that. What’s that got to do with a promachos’s pucker?”
Ben-hadad snorted. “I really hope that we live long enough for ‘What’s that got to do with a promachos’s pucker?’ to become a saying for us.”
Big Leo said, “Our lives are . . . contiguous on the promachos’s mood, Ferk, so Win’s hoping that—that can’t be right. ‘Continuous’? No, not that, either.”
“I really didn’t think I was the subtle one,” Winsen said.
“ ‘Contingent’?” Ben-hadad suggested.
“Ah, that’s it,” Big Leo said.
“I still don’ t—” Ferkudi said.
Kip felt a sudden surge of love for these big apes. They were nervous. Chatty. Nettlesome. And yet they were here. With him.
They could’ve had a secure kingdom in Blood Forest, for a while at least. Fame, for a while at least. And yet they were here, for him.
With the honor guard there with them, a mature man would never crack a joke. Kip was a fugitive, and honor guards could turn to actual guards all too easily.
Exactly how far being a Guile would benefit Kip depended completely on Andross Guile’s whim.
“It means we hope the old man’s been eating his prunes,” Kip said as the lift doors opened.
“I still don’ t—”
“Orholam’s scabby left nut, Ferk!” Ben-hadad said, turning, not noticing the doors were now fully open and dozens of nobles and retainers and men-at-arms lining the hallway were looking at them. “He means that if that batshit-crazy old man is cranky because he’s constipated, we’re fucked!”
Ben looked at the faces of his friends, and then followed those to the aghast faces in the hall behind him. “Oops.”
Kip let him twist in the wind. Anything Kip did would merely make it seem like Ben-hadad was repeating an attitude Kip had modeled before. But give Ben-hadad this: his brain only stayed in panicked paralysis for a single heartbeat.
Ben-hadad limped out of the lift first, leaning heavily on his cane, exaggerating the limp. “War wound,” he said, too loudly, rubbing his ear as if he were part deaf. “The wights knocked me a bit senseless.”
Having seen that Andross Guile himself wasn’t in the hallway, Kip let himself take a breath.
After all, if his grandfather decided to kill him, it wouldn’t be over something like this. “Commander,” Kip said. “See that your man is appropriately disciplined later. For the moment, we’ve things to do.”
“Yes, my lord.”
They strode forward past the whispers, and surrendered their weapons to the Blackguards standing at the audience-hall door.
Out of the side of his mouth, Ben-hadad muttered, “I said, ‘Oops.’ ”
Kip recognized one—and only one—of the Blackguards at the door. Jin Holvar had recovered from her wounds, but looked older and grim as she extended her hands for their weapons.
“You know,” Cruxer said to Kip, unbuckling his sword belt and handing it over, “it stings not to be able to go armed in front of the White and the promachos, especially given that you’re family, and I’m a legacy, and all of us were so close to being Blackguards. I mean, I understand it. And it wouldn’t be so bad if the Lightguards didn’t get to go armed here while we don’t. But they do.”
Jin Holvar grimaced as if she agreed, but she maintained her Blackguard professionalism.
“No need to salt the wound,” Kip said. “The Blackguards here already have to share duties with the men who murdered Goss—and he was a Blackguard nunk at the time, wasn’t he?”