They made it to the private room Teia and Ironfist were sharing. It was guarded by an honor guard of Tafok Amagez and the new Mighty and the Blackguards. After knocking, Kip stepped inside the door, then slipped through the black curtains, careful not to let in any light that might kill Teia.
“You in here?” Kip asked, not really serious.
“Sadly,” Teia said. “Some old guy keeps telling me stories about the glory days or something.”
“If I could move, I would so kick your ass for that,” Ironfist’s voice said.
Kip shifted his vision to the sub-red to be able to see in the utter darkness. At least he still had that.
“It’s so dark in here,” Ferkudi said. “Why doesn’t someone—”
“Ferk, no!” Kip said, but he was too late.
Ferkudi threw open the curtains. The day was blinding bright. Iron-fist flinched, and Teia shrank back, throwing her hands over her eyes.
But then nothing happened.
“Well, I guess that answers how long that lacrimae sanguinis stays active,” Kip said.
Then Teia collapsed.
“Oh, no!” Ferkudi said. “What happened?!”
“You idiot!” Ben-hadad shouted. “What have you done?!”
Then Teia suddenly grinned, and Kip noticed that she was wearing black eye caps over her eyes. She reached over to her bedside table, though, and placed two slightly-less-unsettling leather eye patches over them.
“Orholam’s hairy butt crack, Teia,” Ferkudi said. “You nearly stopped my heart.”
They all looked at him, incredulous.
Winsen said, “You do realize that’s the opposite of what just happened, right? The literal opposite.”
Ferkudi looked back at them for a moment, then, chagrined. “Oh. Oh, I mean . . . sorry, Teia. I wasn’t thinking.”
“I really missed you, Ferk.” She sat up and hugged him. “But that hurt like hell, and if I ever get out of here, I’m definitely gonna kick you in the stones for it.”
He looked uncertain. “Am I supposed to let you do that?”
“No, you’re supposed to try to stop me. I’m just telling you because I know you can’t.”
She grinned then, and Kip could see that she was trying things out, trying to see if she could fit back in with her friends’ old banter. ‘Do I have a place here?’
Ferkudi looked confused. Did this go in the Box? It was obvious that Teia wasn’t going to be out sparring with them anytime soon—if ever—so where was she going to have a chance to make good on her threat?
C’mon, Ferkudi, please . . .
“Challenge accepted!” Ferkudi said, and Teia’s smile exploded light everywhere.
“So, Winsen,” Ironfist said gruffly. “What’s this I heard about? You killed a bane?”
“Eh. Wasn’t so hard,” Winsen said. “Sort of embarrassing, actually. Breaker told me I had to shoot the crystal. I missed it ten times. Target this big. Only two hundred paces away. Ten misses. Ten.”
Of course, he was discounting how he’d sneaked and fought his way across the bane—alone, evading hundreds of wights and drafters and soldiers, and killing so many he’d had to start retrieving his arrows and theirs, not to mention saving lives on other bane from his perch.
“Better than I did!” Big Leo said. “I didn’t even make it to my bane before Karris and Gill killed it.” Of course, he didn’t mention that he’d been instrumental in leading the final assault on the White King, and saving Karris’s life a half-dozen times.
“Better than I did!” Ferkudi said. “I never even made it past the wall.” Of course, he’d held the wall. For a long, perilous time, he’d held the wall nearly alone against Dagnu until the astonished locals had rallied to him.
“Better than I did!” Kip said. “I barely even made it out the front door!”
They laughed.
“Better than I did!” Teia said. “I barely made it out of my room.”
And again.
Then they looked to Ben-hadad, who painted a disconcerted look on his face. He’d saved Einin’s life (she would recover, but was in the infirmary now) and then killed Belphegor and destroyed the yellow bane. “Wow,” he said, “sounds like you all did terrible. I kicked ass.”
They laughed and jeered.
Winsen said, “Yeah, sure. You know I saved your bouncy butt three different times, don’t you, Froggie?”
“ ‘Froggie’? Froggie?! Don’t you dare!” Ben-hadad said.
“It’s the Spring of Doom!”
“The Leaping Lancer!”
“It’s the Hopping Death!”
“Someone save me from the Sprinting Cripple!”
Ben-hadad shook his head stoically, muttering as he realized he simply needed to take his punishment and hope that they didn’t stumble upon a new Name for him.
Finally, Ironfist said somberly, “You all were . . . superlative.” He didn’t say ‘unlike me,’ but they all heard it.
Their joviality died.
“Don’t do that,” Kip said. “You were trying to save the Chromeria and destroy the Order before they killed us all. Cruxer fucked up. We know you tried.”
“Maybe if I’d slowed down, he could’ve heard me. I was trying to be like . . . like Andross Guile, and I should’ve just been me.” Ironfist winced at his pain.
“You brought an army, a navy, and the best general in the world,” Kip said. “Without any one of those, we’d all be dead. Truth is, we all failed. Anyone here not able to think of something you could have done differently that wouldn’t have saved lives? Anyone?”
They shook their heads, one at a time, and some looked away.
“There’s no shame in it,” Kip said. “Cruxer shouldn’t have gone after Ironfist. He should’ve been guarding me. Maybe he would’ve saved me from Zymun and Aram. He failed us, but without him I wouldn’t be standing here. Most of you wouldn’t, either. He was our heart. Sometimes you do your best, and it’s not good enough. That’s why we have each other.”
“I know I butted heads with him a lot,” Ben-hadad said, “but I really loved that asshole.”
“I love all you assholes,” Winsen said. “Well . . . like, most of you. Mmm . . . maybe more like ‘tolerate.’ ”
“Gah!” Big Leo said, and he reached his enormous arms around as many of them as he could and swept them into a huge hug.
“Careful, careful!” Ironfist said from his bed as they tipped over.
Kip leaned into the entire mass, and they all tripped and went slipping over Ironfist’s bed.
In a moment, they transformed back into the children they had recently been: laughing, tickling, shoving, flicking one another in the stones, and trying to crawl out from under the pile.
“I should’ve never have resigned!” Ironfist shouted. “I’d give you all a hundred laps for this!”
“You didn’t resign!” Ben-hadad said. “You got fired!”
“Stop reminding me! Ow! Not the chest, off the chest!”
They soon headed out—the blast of light from the window had Teia sicker than she’d wanted to admit.