“Shhh, child,” the White said.

Kip started. He didn’t even know she was awake. Didn’t know she could wake. Two Blackguards had stayed, but others had fled to get help.

“Wake my room slave, Kip, and say nothing more for the moment. Adrasteia, get behind the curtain, please.”

Kip walked to the slave’s closet and knocked. No response. He opened the door, and saw the old woman, snoring in her chair. “Caleen,” he said. “Caleen!”

She snorted and opened her eyes, then followed him blearily. And slowly. Damn she was old. But by the time they got back, Teia had hidden.

The White said, “It’s my time, Bilhah. Summon High Luxiat Selene. Ask no one else to come in. I don’t wish my end to be all a clamor and panic.”

Bilhah shuffled out past the Blackguards, slowly.

When the door closed behind her, Teia came out from behind the curtain. She asked, “Why did I have to hide? I mean, why’d I have to hide from her?”

“So you wouldn’t have to kill her,” the White said. “She’s been reporting to Andross Guile for ten years now. She has a grandson she loves.”

“And Andross used it against her,” Kip said bitterly. He didn’t know why it was hard to believe his grandfather had hired an assassin—the old monster had done it before. But still. Kip had played games with Andross. Andross was even charming sometimes. And a murderer. Killing people like they were cards to be cleared from the play surface.

“Why didn’t you sell her?” Teia asked. “She betrayed you.”

“Hers was a sin of weakness, not one of malice. It tortures her, and I let it. That’s her punishment. And if one is to have a spy in one’s chambers, what better than one who is hard of hearing and a little slow? After I pass, you tell her I knew, and that I forgave her. But not until after I pass. I don’t want her weeping to be the last thing I hear.”

Not for the first time, Kip wondered at the White. Both uncommonly gracious and uncommonly hard.

“Wait, why would Andross knowing that Teia was here matter? She’s— Oh.”

If the Broken Eye found out Teia had tried to foil the murder of the White, they’d know she was betraying them. They might figure it out anyway.

The White said, “You have my permission to tell Kip everything, Teia. But I don’t release you from your mission.”

“Where’s everyone else?” Kip asked. “It’s not right we should be the only ones here.”

The White simply breathed for a few long moments, as if her previous speech had worn her out. “The Spectrum is meeting, appointing Zymun Prism-elect. All my friends? Off, away, obeying orders,” she said. “Dying is a task I can accomplish alone. Adrasteia, stop. That’s enough. If not this night, I’ll die tomorrow. They only snip a few days from my natural span, and I am not such a fool…” She got winded and couldn’t speak for a little bit. “Such a fool I cannot take certain advantages from knowing my own last day. Go now, go.”

They turned and went to the door, but she said, “Kip, not … not you.”

Teia pulled her hood closed and disappeared, and the White beckoned Kip closer. “Desk. Card. Take it. And one last puzzle for you, O blood of Guile: Not only Prisms fly.”

Kip went to her desk and found the Nine Kings card held between panes of glass. The White, much younger: Unbreakable. He tucked it in a pocket.

“Open the curtains,” the White said. “I would … look upon the light.”

Kip drew the curtains all the way open. It was gray out, not quite dawn. “Orholam shine upon you, High Lady,” he said.

She didn’t respond. The Blackguards, who’d overheard the last, came to stand at her side. Keeping one last watch. Tears were streaking down Gavin Greyling’s cheeks.

Kip stepped out into the hall. He couldn’t mourn now. He pushed it off. Had to think.

Almost dawn on Sun Day, and Zymun was going to be named Prism-elect? They’d do it at dawn, or even before, so he could perform the morning ceremonies. If Kip wanted to get out, he didn’t have much time.

The squad was waiting for him. “Let’s go!” Kip shouted. They were ready. They ran for the lifts. High Luxiat Selene, coming to give last rites in her many-colored robes of office, stepped to the side as they pounded past her. They piled into the lift and set the counterweights. Made it, thank Orholam.

Cruxer threw the lever, and they dropped—one level.

The lift jerked to a stop so hard it nearly knocked them all off their feet.

“What are you doing, Captain?” Ferkudi asked Cruxer.

Cruxer said, “It wasn’t me.” He flipped the lever back and forth to show them.

They were at the Spectrum’s level. Kip turned to see a smug Grinwoody. Apparently the lever in his hand was some kind of override. “Ah, hello, sirs,” he said. “Promachos Guile demands you come with me. Now.”

His triumphant grin told Kip just how much trouble they were in.

Chapter 90

For one mad moment, Kip thought about beating the hell out of Grinwoody and making a run for it. It was, of course, a terrible plan, but that grossly grinning face made it so tempting.

Instead, Kip and the squad followed Grinwoody to the Lightguard checkpoint, heart like a stone. There was no general Blackguard checkpoint here: their numbers were too depleted now. They were only stationed directly outside the council chamber, down the hall.

But as they got closer to the four Lightguards, a young Lightguard officer stood up with difficulty from the chair where he’d been resting. He lifted himself with the help of a boar spear. The crossbar was designed to stop the penetration of the spear into a boar’s flesh so it couldn’t gore you, but he was using it as a crutch.

Kip could feel the ripple of recognition pass through the squad, like wolves with their hackles rising.

Aram. He had a splint around the knee that Cruxer had destroyed. In the year since he’d been crippled, the young man had obviously been sucking at the teat of bitterness, for his face was twisted more than his leg. But whatever else it had done to him, his injury hadn’t stunted his physical growth. Aram had filled out. His arms and shoulders were huge even as his crippled leg had withered, and Kip had no doubt that the young man was far more proficient with that boar spear than anyone would guess.

There was a flash of something in Aram’s lidded eyes as the squad approached, hastily hidden. But Kip recognized it. All the hatred and resentment in the world—and Aram’s eyes held his share and more—couldn’t hide that emotion. Not from Kip. It was grief.

It was being excluded from a club that you wanted to be part of more than anything. It was not-belonging.

It was only in seeing that feeling so perfectly mirrored in Aram’s eyes that Kip realized the void of it in his own heart. When had that ache disappeared? Kip had been an outsider for all his life. The fat boy. The drunkard’s boy. The whore’s son. The Tyrean. The bastard. The unfairly favored. The boy who didn’t deserve to be in the Blackguard. For all his life, Kip had felt excluded.

Aram was feeling that. He’d lost the Blackguard. Kip was going to lose it himself. How could he look at Aram and not feel compassion?

Technical ability wasn’t what made a Blackguard, though it was part of it. The essence of a Blackguard was sacrifice. They lived and died for each other, and that, the unquestioned devotion of the whole corps, made the whole greater than the sum of its parts. A Blackguard could be told to go to his death, and he would, because he loved his fellows and he trusted that his commander wouldn’t waste him. Orders might come down that made no sense that you could see, but they did make sense. Mistakes happened, men and commanders failed, but not—in this one tiny, precious corner of the world—from malice or selfishness.