“Was just a question,” Ferkudi muttered.

“Then let’s go,” Cruxer said. “And, Breaker, next time I ask if you’re sure? Lie.”

Kip took a deep breath. They were placing a great deal of faith in his intuition. If he was wrong …

If he was wrong, they would all die, instead of most or all of them dying, which was what would happen if they charged the main hall.

They arrived at yet another hall. “This way to the lift,” Ben-hadad said. He pointed down the other direction. “That way goes to a wall that will become an open door in half an hour. It should rotate open far enough for us to slip through in … maybe ten, fifteen minutes. It would put us behind the Prism’s Tower, but we’d still have to make it past the Lightguards in the yard.”

“How many of these bastards are there?” Teia asked.

“Five hundred eighty-two,” Ferkudi said.

They looked at him. It had been a rhetorical question.

Ferkudi said, “As of last week, anyway. What? Like I’m the only one who looks at the kitchen manifests?” His voice dripped sarcasm.

“Holy shit, Ferkudi,” Big Leo said.

“What? I wanted to know if there would be any Tyrean oranges at the Sun Day parties.”

Kip didn’t know whether to be more amazed that it had never occurred to Ferkudi that the Tyrean orange groves were held by the enemy—along with the rest of Tyrea—or that the big clod had somehow done the arithmetic to figure out how much food meant exactly five hundred eighty-two Lightguards, and then had remembered it.

“Trying to hold a hall against musketeers for fifteen minutes is suicide,” Cruxer said. “We go up.”

Chapter 94

“Everyone ready?” Cruxer whispered. They were behind and to the side of the lift, but they would be exposed to the musket fire from the Lightguards as they ran to get into it.

“Maybe the light’s good enough for Breaker to try here?” Teia asked.

“Teia, are you serious with this?” Ben-hadad asked.

“Sorry,” she said.

“We’re ready,” Kip told Cruxer. “Teia, maybe you could … could you use it for all of us?” Kip asked.

“No. I barely know how I use it for myself.” She pulled together the hood over her face and—despite that it had no laces or other visible means of fastening—the cloth cinched together tightly, leaving only her eyes visible. The face shimmered and disappeared, leaving what looked a hole, only her eyes floating against blackness.

Teia turned her back and Kip saw the two disks moving across the cloak. The black passed in front of the white disk like an eclipse. White light flared briefly around the black disk, and then the entire cloak shimmered and Teia disappeared.

The entire squad muttered curses.

“If we get out of this alive, I really want to study that cloak,” Ben-hadad said.

The natural light that usually suffused this chamber was cut off, the windows covered. Clearly, the Lightguards were trying to minimize their handicaps against the Mighty.

The Mighty? Is that really what we’re going to call ourselves?

The light was weak, but it was full-spectrum. With his spectacles, Kip could draft whatever he wanted. But more choices in a limited time didn’t mean you could do everything—it meant that you could do anything, so you probably did nothing, frozen with indecision. How long would it take the Lightguards following them from the stairs to find their way through all the halls and catch up?

So Kip fell back to the old standbys, albeit with far greater proficiency and less waste than he would have before all his training with Karris. He drafted the equivalent of a tower shield of green onto his left arm, and drew still more green, weakly, through his green spectacles. It was slow, but it would have to do.

And suddenly, despite the green he was drafting, he was a coward. He didn’t want to move. Didn’t want to be a target to dozens of men with muskets.

What the hell? Green had always made him invincible, had always made fear foreign.

This is what it is to grow up. It is to live beyond the blind rush of passion, or hate, or green luxin, or battle juice. It is to see what must be done, and to do it, without feeling a great desire or a great hatred or a great love. It is to confront fear, naked. No armor of bombast or machismo. Just duty, and love for one’s fellows. Not love felt, not the love that compelled action without thought, but love chosen deliberately. I am the best person to do this thing, it said, though I may die doing it.

I will go, it said, with clear eyes and no passion, but it was love, love, love all the same.

The drug that was green luxin had no hold on Kip, but he took a deep breath, and ran.

He ran, on tiptoe. He ran, without screaming defiance. He ran as silently as possible. And running in such a way, he ran without being detected, almost all the way to the lift.

A shout rang out as he threw himself into the lift. There was white stone here, lit from the mirrors above, and it gave him green sluggishly, even as he lay down and raised the shield, sideways, making an embankment of green luxin.

The rest of the squad was hot on his heels. Winsen threw a yellow flashbomb, and it hit right in front of the turning Lightguards. Perfect throw, perfect flashbomb. Several of the Lightguards, scared out of their minds, clenched fingers on their triggers. The roar of matchlocks in their ears and resounding magnified off the stone walls only doubled the confusion of the Lightguards, who’d only turned in time to be blinded.

Only one or two of all of them got shots off even vaguely in the direction of the squad. The whine of ricochets sounded off the far walls.

Cruxer leapt over Kip’s shield and threw the counterweights, ignoring the danger, and was about to throw the release to fling them upward when Kip cried, “Cruxer, no! Ben!”

Ben-hadad had gone sprawling. He picked himself up immediately, but fell again. His knee was red, and when he stepped again, it turned a direction a knee shouldn’t turn.

Ferkudi was up in an instant. He hopped up over Kip’s wide shield and ran out. Shots rattled into Kip’s shield, and Kip was frozen. The shield embankment was open luxin, if he let it go, they’d all be vulnerable. They could all die.

This was his part. This, now, in this moment, was the totality of what he could do. If he tried to be a hero, his friends would die. As they might die anyway.

He shook as the Lightguards recovered and more brought their weapons to bear, some aiming at Kip and the others in the lift, and some aiming at Ferkudi leaping out of the lift and Ben-hadad on the floor.

A blunderbuss seemed to appear out of midair, to the side of the crescent of Lightguards. Hammer slapped down, and sparks and fire and molten death shot out, raking across the front line. It could only be Teia. Kip’s eyes widened to sub-red in an instant, and the inane thought floated into his mind: I couldn’t have widened my eyes that fast six months ago. Progress!

He saw Teia flinging the spent blunderbuss into the still-standing Lightguards. Then she hefted the other blunderbuss that she’d balanced against her left leg, and shot the second rank of Lightguards.

One or two shot vaguely in her direction before she discharged that shot, then she was off, legs briefly visible as her cloak swung free of her legs. But none of the Lightguards saw it. The attack from midair was too surprising, too disorienting. They almost broke.