“Faking, surely, but it’s good she wishes you to feel competent,” Andross said.
“It’s your fault, you know,” Karris said.
“Excuse me?” Andross asked.
“Gavin told me all about your books of genealogy, how the family looked at marriages like the horse breeders you all once were. He said it was the trade-off your family had made for its huge drafting potential and many other gifts—that your line had never had many children. And Felia had what, one sister? with very happily married and active parents, too, Gavin said.”
Andross said, “Oh, I know the Guiles’ lack of fecundity well enough, thank you. It was the reason I was willing to make such deep compromises in the areas of talent, intelligence, strength, and charisma when I decided to marry one of my sons to a White Oak. Along with their stubborn foolishness, your family had a history of breeding like rabbits. Unfortunately, it seems the last trait in you was trumped by all the former ones, as you wasted your childbearing years with your intransigence.”
Karris was silenced, her mouth open.
Grinwoody smirked triumphantly, lickspittle that he was.
“But enough,” Andross said. “A wise man provides himself a quiver full of arrows, but the warrior who finds himself down to two defectives doesn’t simply give up fighting, does he?”
“ ‘Two defectives’?” Kip said, accidentally speaking out loud. Andross seemed glad to have landed a blow. But Kip continued, “Two? So Zymun’s finally been showing you his true colors, huh? Has he been raping the servants?”
He saw the sickened, guilty look on Karris’s face and the flash of anger on Andross’s.
“More than one, then?” Kip asked. As if Kip hadn’t warned them Zymun was a serpent.
Shit! He shouldn’t have asked about Zymun. It was enough for him to know that they knew something was deeply wrong with his half brother. He hadn’t gathered any evidence yet that Zymun was gone on the dates of the massacre at Apple Grove. Once he did, he wanted to confront the man in front of them about it. But that time would come. Soon.
“To the matter at hand,” Andross suggested.
For once, they were all quite willing to agree.
“What is this weapon you claim to have?” Andross asked.
“You haven’t figured it out yet, grandfather?” Kip asked as if it were easy. “How to counter the bane?”
“I have many ideas. The question is what your single one is. And whether it’s right.”
“Our forebears knew about the bane, and they knew far more than we do,” Kip started. “Yet another thing the Chromeria has hidden that endangers us all.”
“They couldn’t have imagined the nine kingdoms of old united,” Karris said. “They surely couldn’t have imagined fighting more than one bane at a time.”
“Nonetheless,” Kip said. “The ancients didn’t leave us defenseless. The defenses are all around us.”
“I’m not in the mood for games,” Andross said.
“The Thousand Stars and the Tower Mirrors,” Kip said. “They weren’t intended to be expensive amusements or symbols of Orholam’s kindness or even complicated instruments for executions—though they are all those things, too. They’re weapons. They were made to fight the old gods.”
Karris believed it instantly. Kip could see her faith on her face, as if everything was finally coming together, here at the end of things, perfectly in time. Andross looked like he was having to do far more work, fitting this potential revelation into an intricate rubric of what he already knew and all the terms and conditions this revelation would have to fulfill to be true. But his initial read seemed cautiously positive.
“How?” Andross asked. “How exactly?”
Kip swallowed. “I don’t know exactly. That we have to fight six or seven bane rather than one like ancients would’ve prepared for? I think that’s why we need someone who can juggle more things at the same time than anyone else. Someone with immense power, and someone with an implacable will, able to roll back the very stone of history careening down a hill to crush this empire.”
“Someone really special, huh?” Andross said.
“You probably want to know about the threat, and how I’m sure of it,” Kip said.
Andross looked like he wanted to nail Kip up on that ‘someone’ remark, but he let it go for the moment. So Kip gave them a summary of what had happened since they’d last had messages from each other.
It turned out that though both had sent numerous letters, few had gotten through, so repetition was necessary. Naturally, he skipped things that he didn’t think they had any need to know. He was sure they were doing the same to him. And certain questions couldn’t be asked, such as if Karris had heard anything from Teia. Kip had hoped she’d be on Blackguard duty when he came in. He’d have to wander by the barracks on his way out.
When he got to his account of the naval battle, Andross went purple with rage.
Not, it turned out, at Kip. Instead, it was with Caul Azmith. He looked, briefly, like he was going to blame Karris for it.
She said quietly, “I was able to bust him down to captain of a single ship. It was as big a step down as I could manage without your political backing. Which I didn’t seem to have at the time. Maybe we should remember who made him a general in the first place?”
Kip could see the answer by the pinched look on Andross’s face.
“If he manages to survive this battle,” Andross said, “and his sort always do, somehow—a death will have to be arranged. Make a note of it, Grinwoody. And notify me the next time any of his relations are up for any type of office anywhere. That family needs to end.”
“Not that I have any love for the Azmiths, but if we’re gonna make a whole family pay when one of its members causes a few thousand deaths, the Guiles are in a whole lot of trouble,” Kip said.
Andross’s eyes flashed. “Didn’t you come here to beg some favor of me? Reconsider your attitude, boy.”
“Look, old man!” Cruxer burst out, from nowhere. “Kip left a throne to come here to save you. Wealth, position, security? He gave those up out of loyalty to the Chromeria—and even to you. You sent no help to us when we were dying for the Seven Satrapies, and yet here he is. Because he’s a hundred times the man you are. So if anyone ought to check his attitude, it’s you.”
Everyone was stunned to silence.
Kip was reminded that Cruxer naturally deferred to authority, but this was also the young man who’d broken Aram’s knee out of the blue when he saw authority endorsing injustice.
Andross waved to the Blackguards at the door. “Remove this failed Blackguard trainee. I can’t abide mediocrity.”
Cruxer didn’t even look to Kip to countermand the order. He strode toward the door.
“Oh, Grinwoody,” Andross said, projecting his voice so that Cruxer was sure to hear him, “check if Inana ux Holdfast is still getting a pension for her time in the Blackguard. And cancel it. Check to see if perhaps she’s been overpaid for years and owes a ruinously large debt.”
That was Cruxer’s mother.
The young commander of the Mighty flinched as if struck, but he didn’t turn.