Slowly, despite the still-churning mess of thoughts and emotions roiling head and heart and stomach, and despite the headache she had—she always got headaches when she cried—slowly, Karris nodded, and she felt a little bit of herself coming back. “Bright and early,” she promised.
Chapter 41
“I wanted to ask you something,” Kip said, coming into the little room that Cruxer had made his office and bedroom. It was nauseatingly tidy. Even the stacks of schedules on the desk looked just so.
“Anything,” Cruxer said. He’d just dribbled oil onto his blade, and now he picked up his whetstone, spinning a spear point into position.
“It’s a sore spot.”
Cruxer didn’t waver. He began the soothing wush-wush of the whetstone.
Kip went on. “Big Leo said something I didn’t understand. He said you were still grieving Lucia—”
“It hasn’t been that long,” Cruxer interrupted. It was uncharacteristic of him. He’d been in love with the young Blackguard scrub, and when she’d stepped into the line of fire, taking a bullet that had been meant for Kip, Cruxer’s world had ended.
“No. It hasn’t. And that wasn’t at all what tripped me up. It was that he thought the reason you were angry about me giving Ruadhán another chance had something to do with her. He wouldn’t say anything else when I asked him. So what’s that about?”
“I’m fine with you giving Ruadhán another chance,” Cruxer said. “Now.”
“That actually confuses me more,” Kip said.
Cruxer paused in his sharpening, then said, “You’re the . . . you’re the Breaker, not me. Different rules apply to you. I’m not a man who does new things. I’m a man who does the old things as well as they can be done. But here? I’m doing new things all the time. I’m making decisions over other people’s lives, like I’ve got any right to do that. I’m worried all the time, Breaker. I keep looking around waiting to be punished,” Cruxer said.
“Punished? For what?”
“Breaker, I’m eighteen years old. I’m styling myself a commander? I’m not even eligible to be a watch captain. I keep thinking Orholam’s gonna give me what I deserve any moment.”
“Is that who Orholam is to you?” Kip asked. “An Andross Guile waiting for you to transgress, so that He can expose you at the worst possible moment? Isn’t He instead like Ironfist, who will correct your form, not because He enjoys showing you how you’re messing up but because doing it wrong might get you hurt or killed someday?”
But Cruxer wasn’t even hearing him. “I’m not the man anyone thinks I am. I’m a fraud. I had a hundred chances to come clean, and I never did. And do you know what punishment I got for that?”
“What are you talking about?”
“None. She paid for it.”
“Lucia?” Kip said. “Her dying wasn’t your fault!”
“She wasn’t good enough to make it into the Blackguard—”
Kip accepted that. They’d all known it was true. “She absolutely had the spirit of the best of us, Crux. She saved my life. If this is on anyone, it’s on—”
“She had the spirit, yes, but not the skills. She shouldn’t have been there. Wouldn’t have . . .” His face contorted.
“Wouldn’t have?”
“I fell for her. Hard. Like, before we even talked. There was . . .” Cruxer’s face brightened at the memory. “There was something radiant about her. Like you just want to watch her across the room and watch how spirits lighten as people talk to her. I started training her extra right away, not just to be near her, either. I knew, brother, I knew so early that she’d never make it in. I don’t think she did. And I couldn’t bear to be away from her.”
He took a breath, steadying himself against his grief.
“She came from one of the slave-training houses, you know? If she failed out of Blackguard training, we both knew her owners would look for some other way to recoup their investment. Decent men who just want a domestic don’t bid as much at the auction as men who want a domestic for whom they have . . . other uses as well. Good women who just want a domestic don’t often bring a pretty one into their homes.” He shook his head. “Have you ever seen the light in a girl’s eyes die?” Cruxer met Kip’s gaze for the first time in a while. “No, they didn’t have slaves where you grew up, did they? That disgusting brutality isn’t considered normal in oh-so-backward Tyrea, is it?” he said bitterly. “Well, I couldn’t let it happen. Not to her.”
“Oh, Cruxer.” Kip covered his face.
“I thought, if I could just keep her in until the final testing, I could take my Blackguard price the next day and buy out her contract before her owners sold her. To free her, of course. I mean, I was nervous that maybe . . . even though she’d never acted like it, that maybe she’d attached herself to me hoping that would happen. You know, that she knew I was her only hope to get out. I wouldn’t blame her for it. But as long as she was a slave, the worry’s there, right? The infernal institution perverts everything it touches. So, I get my price, I free her. Maybe she loves me, too, and sticks around for a while. I mean, I was thinking marriage, but I wasn’t going to put that on her. I wanted her to be free to go, if she wanted. But maybe someday . . .” He swallowed.
“So I cheated to keep her in. Our cohort was solid at the top places, but not at the bottom. A couple deep muscle bruises delivered during training the week before testing—hard kicks to a thigh or calf, not anything that would disable anyone, you know? Those kids were going to wash out anyway. What’s the harm? I thought.”
“Cruxer, everyone does that kind of thing, trying to keep their friends with them, and everyone knows it. It’s part of—”
“It’s cheating. It’s wrong.”
Except it wasn’t. Not exactly.
The trainers and the watch captains and the Blackguards’ commander all knew such scheming happened, and they didn’t stop it. In fact, they didn’t even mind, because allowing it rewarded cunning and alliance-making over pure technical fighting skill. Only fighters as incredibly skilled as Cruxer could be unaware of how the others schemed together; fighters as good as Cruxer always made it in regardless.
The rest of the scrubs stayed awake at night, wondering what they could possibly do to make it in. The commander and trainers accepted all the schemes and backstabbing because full Blackguards needed to know how cunning minds worked if they were to guard against such minds, addressing not only external threats but also internal political machinations.
But Kip wasn’t going to convince Cruxer out of his guilt with justifications that others were cheating, too.
Cruxer said, “But of course, like every fraud, I got greedy. Keeping her in the Blackguard until the final testing wasn’t good enough. I wanted to be around her all the time. There was no way she belonged in Aleph squad. I demanded it. Commander Ironfist took one look at me, and he knew. I never felt so naked and foolish in my life. He told me it was gonna lead to grief. He told me! He even offered to buy her contract himself if she failed out early—and I angrily denied everything. Breaker, he gave me a chance to have everything I wanted except that I wouldn’t be the big hero in her eyes, and I lied to his face. I broke faith. I was a man under authority, and in my cowardice and weakness, I ripped myself out of my place in the Great Chain of Being. I stepped outside of Orholam’s protection, and leader that I am, I brought Lucia with me. And she got killed for my sins. Orholam is good and merciful, so I’ve had many blessings since then. But the lesson remains. Those who break faith bring grief to those who love them most. And the sooner they’re stopped, the better.”